GERMANYe/TO-DAY 



GEORGE STUART EULLERTON 




Class 
Book. 






i«iii^. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 



BY 



GEORGE STUART FULLERTON, Ph.D., LL.D. 

Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University, New York 

Honorary Professor in the University of Vienna 

First American Exchange Professor to Austria 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



Copyright 191 5 
The Bobbs-Merrill Company 




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PRESS OF 

BRAUNWORTH & CO. 

BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS 

BROOKLYN, N. Y. 

NOV 26 19(5 



TO THOSE WHO DESIRE 

A MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING 

AMONG CIVILIZED NATIONS 

AND WHO WORK FOR 

THE CAUSE OF 

INTERNATIONAL CONCILIATION 




PREFACE 

IN this little volume I have brought together a 
collection of facts that may easily be veri- 
fied by anyone who has access to a public library. 
He who cares to do so may wholly overlook any 
expressions of opinion which I have permitted 
myself, and may confine his attention exclusively 
to the facts adduced. They have been sifted 
with much care and have been submitted to the 
criticism of experts. I believe them to be accu- 
rate. 

I have not desired simply to add one more to 
the many excellent works which give to Eng- 
lish readers general information about Germany. 
I have wished to present in brief outline a sketch 
which will give a just conception of the political 
and social constitution of the German nation 
and of the spirit with which it is penetrated. 
Owing to various reasons there is much miscon- 
ception in this field among my countrymen. 



PREFACE 

United Germany is a young and vigorous 
nation. So is the United States of America. 
The better the two understand one another, the 
better for both. The more profitable will be 
their mutual relations in the time to come. 

It is just that I should say that any sympathy 
which I feel for Germany has no other source 
than an intimate acquaintance extending over 
many years. I have no German blood in my 
veins. My family has been American as long as 
there has been an American nation. 

May my little book be of service to Americans. 
George Stuart Fullerton. 

Munich, June, 1915. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The United States of Germany . i 

II The Rights of the People in Ger- 
many 25 

III The Education of the People in Ger- 

many 60 

IV The German People and Militarism 83 
V The Profit and Loss of Militarism 106 

VI Imperialism 133 

VII The Future of the Nations . .156 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

CHAPTER I 
THE UNITED STATES OF GERMANY 

/^1 ERMANY is as much a nation as is the 
V-J United States of America. We must not 
allow ourselves to be misled by the associations 
of the word "Empire." The German Empire is 
a constitutional confederation of states inhabited 
by a homogeneous people, having the same blood, 
the same speech and much the same traditions. 
The Germans had a long experience of the dis- 
advantages of disunion, and they have acute mem- 
ories of bitter humiliations suffered when Ger- 
many was disunited and weak. They have now 
had an experience of more than forty years 
showing them the advantages of union, and all 
the states appreciate those advantages to the 
full. 

I 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

The Unification of the Nation 

It is now natural for us to think of our states 
as united in a confederation, but it is not so easy 
for us to think of kingdoms and principalities, 
whose kings and princes are by some conscien- 
tiously believed to hold their places by divine 
right, as giving up some of their rights as states 
to a federal government. 

To comprehend the situation more sympatheti- 
cally, we must go back to an earlier time in our 
own history. The old quarrel touching states- 
rights and federal control has been for us settled. 
We are a nation, and the states, although sover- 
eign within certain limits, have finally renounced 
that complete sovereignty which would make a 
true union impossible. Once the American 
would have found it hard to understand what 
he now takes as a matter of course. Our Civil 
War was the great climax which finally made of 
us a nation. 

The United States of Germany have developed 
a national consciousness in much the same way 
as the United States of America. The develop- 

2 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

ment has, however, been a more rapid one. It 
has become natural for Germans in all the states 
to think of themselves as Germans as we think 
of ourselves as Americans. 

The rapidity of this development has been 
partly due to pressure from without. Had our 
United States been surrounded by powerful and 
jealous neighbors, they would have been com- 
pelled to attain to a closer union of feeling at an 
earlier period. Germany has been in such a 
position, and Germans have been compelled to 
lean upon Germans and to create for themselves 
a strong central government. 

I have seen this unification of the Germans 
going on for thirty years. Those who do not 
know Germany well may be misled by superficial 
differences. Those who really know the country 
have been aware for years that Bavaria would no 
more think of breaking away from Prussia than 
Massachusetts would from New York. When it 
is suggested by men belonging to other nations, 
that a division of the German confederation 
would be desirable, and that the smaller states 
should be liberated from what is called the "Prus- 

3 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

sian yoke," Germans who hear such suggestions 
feel very much as we Americans should feel if 
outsiders talked of the desirability of the seces- 
sion of some of the states within our Union. 
The United States of Germany have the same 
will to be one as the United States of America. 

Even in the imperial province of Alsace-Lor- 
raine, so lately added to the German states, there 
has evinced itself in recent years rather a sur- 
prising sentiment in favor of the Empire. We 
must not allow ourselves to be misled by the 
outburst of popular feeling which has sometimes 
shown itself against the army, or rather against 
certain officers. Alsace and Lorraine are not 
yet German in feeling to the same extent as 
Bavaria or Wiirtemberg. Nevertheless, any ill- 
will which may be found against things German 
is not to be compared with the ill-will of a great 
part of Ireland against England. The fact is 
surprising, but I believe it to be a fact. 

The imperial province has shared in the eco- 
nomic advantages of a union with the Empire 
and feels that it has, on the whole, been well 
governed. In my opinion, the German govern- 

4 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

ment has underrated the strength of the bonds 
which hold the province to the Empire. The 
towns in Alsace and Lorraine elect their own 
mayors, but the election must be approved by the 
representative of the imperial government. In 
recent times a number of those elected have not 
been approved by the imperial government, as 
they were suspected of being not sufficiently pro- 
German in feeling. Nevertheless, at the out- 
break of the war of 19 14 some of these very men 
were among the first to volunteer as soldiers in 
the defense of the Empire. 

There has just come into my hands at this 
writing a copy of the radical-socialistic news- 
paper of Miilhausen, the official organ of its 
party. I notice that the radical-socialistic deputy 
to the Reichstag from Alsace vigorously main- 
tains that a separation of Alsace and Lorraine 
from Germany would lead to industrial disaster 
there and to an injury to the working man. 

It is not surprising that the smaller German 
states should hold with enthusiasm to the Ger- 
man confederation. Alone, they were of no 
significance, and were at great economic disad- 

5 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

vantage. United, they are "constituent parts of 
a great nation and enjoy very great economic 
advantages. 

In this connection, let me quote the words of 
Dr. Herbert Adams Gibbons, the correspondent 
of the Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, who 
visited Germany at the end of 19 14 to see for 
himself the actual conditions which prevailed 
there. He indicates, in his letter from Munich, 
that his sympathies and prejudices do not in- 
cline him to the German point of view. Never- 
theless, in speaking of the smaller states, he 
writes: "As in Wurtemberg, so in Bavaria. 
Under Prussian hegemony, these people have 
known uninterrupted and unbounded prosperity. 
Aladdin's lamp has been before them for the 
rubbing during this past generation. They have 
had their outlet to the sea. They have enjoyed 
the benefit of the prestige and power of united 
Germany. Will they ever be content to go back 
again to the regime of the small inland kingdom? 
The Bavarians realize now, more than ever since 
the war started, the intention of the enemies of 
Germany and they feel that this struggle is far 

6 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

more a matter of life and death to them than to 
the Prussians, who have a sea-coast; I noticed 
this in their newspapers." 

Every foreign war is apt to emphasize unity 
among a people and leads to a diminution of 
internal dissensions. But the unparalleled una- 
nimity with which, not only all the German 
states, but also all classes of the populations 
within the states, some of them with apparently 
irreconcilable principles, joined in the great war, 
must have impressed everyone who was an im- 
partial spectator of the occurrences of 19 14 and 
191 5, as was I. A very strong national feeling 
was evinced; something akin to what we look 
for in America. Even confessional differences, 
proverbially the most bitter, were wholly dropped 
out of sight for the time being. 

To be sure, one hears in Munich jests at the 
expense of the Berliner, and in North Germany 
some fun is made of the Bavarian or the Swabian. 
Such banter has, in my opinion, little more sig- 
nificance than has that of the New Yorker, who 
complains that one cannot sleep in Philadelphia, 
because of the noise that the sun makes beating 

7 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

on the roof, or the Philadelphian's remark, that 
he found nothing new in Chicago save the old 
families. There are differences between North 
Germans and South, but they are not greater 
than the differences between dwellers in New 
York and those in New Orleans; they have no 
political significance. The German nation is one, 
it has the will to be one, and there is no reason 
to think that it will again be divided. 

The Federal Government and the States 

The German confederation consists of twenty- 
two states, three free towns, and the imperial 
territory of Alsace-Lorraine. There are four 
kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies and 
seven principalities. The old Hanseatic towns of 
Hamburg, Bremen and Liibeck have retained 
their ancient privileges, and they entered the 
union upon the same basis as the" states, their 
respective mayors representing them where the 
states are represented by their princes. These free 
towns are, in reality, small republics and enjoy 
a thoroughly republican form of government. 

Alsace and Lorraine were added to Germany in 

8 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

1 87 1 and stand in a somewhat different relation 
to the Empire than do the other states. 

The Federal Government 

The Federal or Imperial Government has just 
such rights as were freely granted to it by the 
states which entered into union to form it. Its 
powers are determined by the purposes it was 
intended to serve. The analogy between the 
situation in Germany and in our own country is 
by no means a remote one. There is a Federal 
Government with its two chambers and a Chief 
Executive, and there are the Local Governments 
which it represents and over which it exercises 
a limited control. 

The "Bundesrat," or Federal Council of the 
Empire which corresponds somewhat to our 
Senate, represents the governments of the several 
states. The more important states have a larger 
representation than the smaller, but one by no 
means proportional to their population. Thus, 
Prussia has in the "Bundesrat" only seventeen 
votes out of fifty-eight. This is, to be sure, no 

9 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

measure of the influence of Prussia in the confed- 
eration, for not only does Prussia exercise an im- 
portant influence upon the smaller states, but her 
representation in the "Bundesrat" enjoys a certain 
limited veto-right, which may be exercised to 
prevent innovations in legislation touching the 
army, the navy, duties and excises. The notion 
of especial rights and "reserved" rights is not 
foreign to the German confederation. Thus, 
Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony enjoy, to a limited 
degree, the former; and Bavaria and Wiirtem- 
berg the latter. 

I suppose the German would scarcely be in- 
clined to call the "Bundesrat" an "upper house." 
It is supposed to be the "bearer of the sov- 
reignty" vested in the several states. And yet, 
to the critical eye of the American, its functions 
seem essentially those of an upper house, and 
it cannot legislate for the confederation without 
the cooperation of the lower house. For this 
reason, I shall speak of it as one of the federal 
chambers. 

The members of the second chamber, the 
"Reichstag," which corresponds to our House of 

10 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

Representatives, are elected by universal man- 
hood suffrage. With us, a citizen of the United 
States naturally becomes a citizen of any one 
of the states in which he makes his domi- 
cile. The reverse is the case in Germany. He 
who is the citizen of any state in the German 
confederation is made thereby a citizen of the 
Empire and may vote for the nation's representa- 
tives in the "Reichstag." The vote is direct and 
is by secret ballot. 

The importance of this national representation 
cannot be overestimated, for all laws for the 
regulation of the Empire must, in order to 
pass, receive the votes of an absolute major- 
ity both of the "Bundesrat" and of the "Reichs- 
tag." 

The Federal Government is the supreme legis- 
lative authority in matters regarding the army 
and navy, the imperial finances, and German 
commerce. It controls the posts and telegraphs 
except within two of the states, which have re- 
tained certain rights in this regard, and it con- 
trols the railways, as far as they affect the na- 
tional defenses. To federal legislation the 

ii 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

individual states must adjust themselves in a 
multitude of provinces affecting the rights and 
interests of German citizens. Thus, the Fed- 
eral Government legislates touching naturalisa- 
tion, domicile, navigation of rivers and canals, 
banking, patents and copyrights. It controls 
civil and criminal legislation and the rules of 
judical procedure. The colonies of the Empire 
stand under its authority. 

Compared with our Congress 

It can readily be seen that the powers of the 
federal chambers in Germany are rather closely 
analogous to those exercised by Congress in the 
United States of America. 

Congress can lay and collect taxes and duties, 
borrow money on the credit of the United 
States, regulate foreign and internal commerce, 
fix the conditions of naturalisation, legislate re- 
garding bankruptcy, money, weights and meas- 
ures, the mails, copyrights and patents. It can 
provide for lower federal courts, declare war, 
and raise and support an army and navy. More- 
over, it has organized the public domain into 

12 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY * 

territories and has admitted new states into the 
Union, as it has deemed fit. The much discussed 
so-called "elastic clause" of the constitution, 
enabling Congress to make all laws necessary 
for carrying into execution the powers vested 
by the constitution in the government of the 
United States, or in any department or officer 
of the government has enabled Congress to pass 
measures not contemplated when the constitution 
was promulgated. Such measures were the pur- 
chase of Louisiana and Alaska in 1803 an d 1867, 
and those which concern the dependencies ac- 
quired by the United States in quite recent 
times. 

In short, the Congress of the United States is 
the supreme legislative body of a nation, and 
concerns itself with what regards the nation as 
a whole. The German chambers have precisely 
the same task, and their powers are determined 
by the end held in view. Both federal govern- 
ments represent states which are, within certain 
limits, independent, and, within certain limits, 
stand under a higher authority. 



13 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

The President and the Emperor 

There is one striking difference between the 
position of the chief executive of the German 
nation and that of the President of the United 
States of America. The office of German Em- 
peror is hereditary in the House of Hohenzollern, 
the reigning house of the kingdom of Prussia. 
This arrangement was effected by the mutual 
agreement among the states which formed the 
Union in 1871, and there are historical reasons, 
apart from the size and importance of Prussia 
as a state, which make the arrangement not un- 
natural. 

But both the fact that the chief executive 
of the German nation is an emperor, inheriting 
his title, and the fact that the same individual is 
king of Prussia, and enjoys in that capacity 
various rights which have nothing to do with 
his rights and duties as Emperor, have caused 
in the United States a wide-spread misconcep- 
tion, even among well-informed people, as to 
the imperial office. 

The truth is that the German Emperor is 

H 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

virtually the president of the confederation of 
the German States. It should be noticed that his 
official title is "German Emperor," not "Em- 
peror of Germany." This title was given him 
to emphasize the fact that he is first among the 
German princes, and that his position is not 
identical with that of the German emperor of an 
earlier time. The states do not belong to him ; he 
belongs to them. 

His powers as chief executive of the United 
States of Germany are analogous to those exer- 
cised by our President. Bills passed by the 
chambers must be signed by him before they 
become law. As king of Prussia he can exer- 
cise through the Prussian representation in the 
"Bundesrat," the limited veto-right upon legis- 
lation referred to above. Our President enjoys 
a more unrestricted right of veto, although 
measures may become law by being passed by a 
two-thirds majority of our Senate and House 
over his veto. 

The Emperor can influence legislation in- 
directly by recommendations. So can our Presi- 
dent. Here the advantage lies, rather, in my 

15 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

opinion, with our President, who was elected by, 
and presumably has the support of, one of our 
large political parties, and who is not hampered 
by a senate whose members represent states which 
may easily be made sensitive by what appears to 
them an undue increase in the imperial influence. 
If the Emperor is respected and liked — and there 
can be no question, in the minds of those who 
have known Germany well for the past twenty- 
five years, that the present Emperor is regarded 
in all parts of the Empire with increasing respect 
and affection — his indirect influence may be great. 
He has one advantage over even a popular presi- 
dent in the United States; his term of office is 
longer. 

The Emperor may prorogue the "Reichstag" 
for a period not exceeding thirty days. He may, 
with the approval of the "Bundesrat," dissolve 
it, but then new elections must be ordered within 
sixty days and the new session must be opened 
within ninety days. Our President may call 
special sessions of Congress, and, in case the 
houses disagree with respect to the time of ad- 
journment, he may adjourn them to such time as 

16 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

he thinks proper, but not for a longer time than 
the day fixed for the assembling of the next ses- 
sion of Congress. 

The Emperor is Commander-in-Chief of the 
Army and Navy ; so is our President. The Em- 
peror may declare a defensive war, but, without 
the assent of the "Bundesrat," he may not de- 
clare an offensive war. The funds necessary to 
carry on successfully any war can only be ob- 
tained by vote of the "Reichstag," or lower 
house, which votes the budget. In the making 
of treaties with foreign nations, the appoint- 
ment of ambassadors, etc., the powers of the 
Emperor exceed those of the President. Like 
our President, the Emperor has a "cabinet," 
theoretically responsible only to himself. How- 
ever, in actual practise, the Chancellor of the 
Empire, or Prime Minister, retires, if he cannot, 
in the long run, secure the cooperation of the 
parties in the "Reichstag." No member of our 
cabinet holds his office under this tacit under- 
standing. On the other hand, our cabinet is 
supposed to support the policy of the President, 
which is supposed to be in harmony with that 

17 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

of a majority of our citizens, by whose votes 
the President was elected. Moreover, the mem- 
bers of our cabinet hold office for a definite term 
of years only, and those who are discontented 
with them can afford to wait until their places 
are vacated. 

Federal Government in Germany and 
in America 

It is clear that the Federal Government of the 
German states has many features in common 
with our own Federal Government. There is 
a similar emphasis upon the distinction between 
the legislative and the executive authorities. 
The governments of the states are represented 
in one house, and the people, as such, in the 
other. The Emperor, notwithstanding the title 
he bears and the fact that his office devolves 
upon him by heredity, has powers and duties 
which may well be compared in extent and nature 
to those of our Chief Executive. 

It is of no little importance to insist upon this, 
and to call attention to the actual facts, for even 
the thoughtful among us are more or less in- 

18 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

fluenced by forms of expression. To every 
American schoolboy the word "Emperor" sug- 
gests Augustus, Tiberius, Nero, Charlemagne 
and Napoleon. It does not suggest the perma- 
nent presidency of a voluntary confederation of 
states, several of them republics, which have 
come together on the basis of a constitution 
carefully defining, in the common interest, the 
rights and duties of those who govern as well as 
of those who are governed. It would be unwise 
to push too far the analogy between the United 
States of America and the United States of 
Germany, but it is wise to look at the facts, and 
to avoid the tyranny of words. Of the wisdom 
of avoiding the tyranny of crude mistranslations 
of German words, I need hardly speak, for I 
write for men of intelligence. 

The German States 

The analogy between the constitutions of the 
individual German states which compose the 
confederation and the constitutions of our own 
States is not as close as that between the German 

19 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

Federal Government and our own. The Ger- 
man Federal Government is something relatively 
new. It was freely made. It did not grow up 
as the result of a development extending over 
centuries and exposed to a multitude of histor- 
ical accidents, although its fundamental prin- 
ciples have their roots in the past. On the other 
hand, the states which combined to form the 
Empire were not new communities, but had, 
either as units or in their constituent parts, long 
been in existence, and had enjoyed their own 
traditions. 

When they came together, they did not try 
to remake themselves upon a common pattern. 
Their several constitutions are determined largely 
by tradition and are adjusted, on the whole, to 
the habits and ways of thinking of the people. 
I have said that kingdoms, grand-duchies, 
duchies, principalities and republics have entered 
into the union on relatively equal terms, retain- 
ing their local governments while acquiring fed- 
eral rights. A Bavarian, taking up his residence 
in the republic of Hamburg, is entitled to the 

suffrage, and may help in the election of his 

20 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

chosen candidate to the Reichstag; a native of 
the republic of Bremen may, under similar con- 
ditions, become a voter in Bavaria, Saxony or 
Prussia. But wherever he may have his domi- 
cile, the German must come under local rules 
and regulations. 

The German states have their own represen- 
tative assemblies. The six larger states have the 
two-chamber system. The free cities have their 
legislative bodies. There is much difference in 
the composition of the chambers in the several 
states, but, in general, it may be said, that the 
constitution of the typical German state is less 
democratic than that of the Empire. Heredity, 
the possession of land, the payment of taxes, 
even eminence in science or literature, may give 
one man an advantage over another in the share 
which he has in the government of his fellows. 
Between the constitution of the Free State of 
Hamburg and that of the City of London there 
is a striking similarity. 

Here I may remark that I believe that, after 
the close of the present war, the constitutions 
of the several German states will undergo modi- 

21 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

fications bringing them more into harmony with 
the democratic elements in the imperial constitu- 
tion. Thus, I regard it as not improbable that 
the suffrage in the individual states will take on 
somewhat the same liberal character as is shown 
in the elections for the "Reichstag." The loyalty 
of the people of Germany, and the great sacri- 
fices willingly made by all classes, in the present 
crisis in the life of the nation, would thus meet 
with a fitting recompense. 

The Governments of the States 

The constitutions of the several states have 
undergone changes in the past, and they will 
certainly undergo changes in the future. Never- 
theless, there has been, and still is, much con- 
servatism. This should not surprise the Amer- 
ican, who voluntarily chooses to live under a 
federal constitution which, for a century and a 
quarter, has undergone practically no changes 
of moment, and in which it appears to be ex- 
cessively difficult to introduce changes. When 
men are well off, they fear changes; when they 

are miserable, they court them. Among my 

22 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

personal friends I count men of education and 
intelligence who belong to the Social-Democratic 
party and who stand for thorough-going reforms. 
Nevertheless, I am convinced that, were they 
sure that the sweeping changes, which they seem 
to advocate, might be made at once, they would 
oppose their introduction. Their inconsistency 
is only on the surface. They believe in reforms; 
they do not want revolution; the government 
under which they live is a very tolerable one and 
they know that they could easily get a worse. 

The general principle on which self-govern- 
ment in Germany is based, has been characterised 
in a standard British work as: "Government by 
experts, checked by lay criticism and the power 
of the purse, and effective control by the central 
authorities." It is further added: "That this 
system works without friction is due to the Ger- 
man habit of discipline; that it is, on the whole, 
singularly effective, is a result of the peculiarly 
enlightened and progressive views of the German 
bureaucracy." 

It would be a waste of time for any admirer 
of Germany to try to prove that the constitu- 

23 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

tions of the German states are like those of the 
states which compose our Union. It would be 
foolish for any opponent to maintain, that, be- 
cause unlike them, they are intolerable to the 
populations which live under them. Govern- 
ments have their histories. The test of a govern- 
ment is to be found in what it does, and may in 
the future be expected to do, for the governed. 
If its workings result in degradation and misery, 
in the reign of injustice and a pervasive feeling 
of insecurity, the government is bad, whatever 
its form. If it makes for enlightenment, if there 
is a general confidence in the administration of 
justice and the protection of the rights even of 
the weak, if the mass of the citizens are enabled 
to live happy lives and to develop freely their in- 
tellectual and moral powers, it should not hastily 
be condemned, even by those who, by education 
and by conviction, are led to prefer some other 
form of government. 



CHAPTER II 
THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE IN GERMANY 

THERE is rather a wide-spread belief in 
America, that the Germans, in their 
own home, cannot precisely be called a free 
people, and do not enjoy those rights of man 
to which every American thinks he has a claim. 
Now and then men of an oratorical turn de- 
scribe the German as "groaning under the yoke 
of a Prussian militarism." 

To be sure, those of us who travel in Germany 
see great apparent content, and find faces less 
anxious than those to which we are accustomed 
in New York. Those of us who live for a while 
in Germany and come into close contact with 
Germans discover that they are apt to regard 
with affection the princes of their several states 
and to have a kindly feeling towards their pa- 
ternal government. Nevertheless, there is a tra- 

25 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

dition in some quarters outside of Germany that 
the Germans are groaning under a yoke of some 
kind, and dwellers in other lands have even gone 
so far as to suggest that it would be an act of 
disinterested benevolence to set them free by 
force. 

That all Germans are contented no sensible 
man would maintain. But the average German 
does not appear to be more restlessly discon- 
tented than the average American, who is usually 
agitating for reforms of some sort, and the mass 
of the workers in Germany impress one as dis- 
tinctly less restless and discontented than the 
corresponding classes in Great Britain. For this 
the elaborate social legislation of the last quarter 
of a century is in large measure responsible. 

Certain it is that, notwithstanding the great 
yearly increase of the population, an increase 
approaching a million, and in spite of the problem 
of providing for those added to the population 
in a territory of limited size, emigration from 
Germany has fallen off extraordinarily. This 
is the more remarkable in view of the fact that 
the population is intelligent, well-informed and 

26 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

energetic, possesses the means to emigrate, can 
very easily go to America or elsewhere, and has 
numerous relatives and connections across the 
seas. There is still some emigration, of course, 
but the mass of the inhabitants, whatever they 
may complain of, appear to find life best worth 
living at home. The situation is very different 
from what it is in certain other countries in 
Europe, the emigration to the United States 
from Germany having been, in recent years, if 
the sizes of the populations concerned are taken 
into consideration, scarcely one-twentieth of 
what it has been from Ireland. 

There are, however, certain reasons why the 
American might easily be misled into forming a 
somewhat erroneous opinion of the rights en- 
joyed by the German, and of the measure of his 
contentment with those rights. 

There are differences between the political 
rights of the American and those of his Teutonic 
neighbor. The principle of hereditary right 
seems strange to the American, and it is foreign 
to his thought that men should be appointed, and 
not elected, to membership in any legislative 

27 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

body. Furthermore, the elaborate organization 
of the machinery of government, which obtains 
in Germany, and which results in an admirable 
order and discipline, keeps a man mindful of the 
fact that he is governed. This is distasteful to 
the American. The historical reasons for, and 
the practical significance of, the organization of 
society in the German states, do not at once 
make themselves apparent to our eyes. To do 
justice to them, we are compelled to familiarize 
ourselves with a rather new conception of rights 
and duties. 

One thing, however, the American will learn, 
if his knowledge becomes more than superficial, 
and that is that no man is more conscious than 
is the German of the rights which he actually 
has under the law, nor is any man more ready 
to have recourse to the law to protect them. In 
the present chapter I shall deal briefly with Ger- 
man rights. 

German and American Political Rights 

It is palpable that the political rights of the 
Germans are not identical with those which we 

28 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

Americans enjoy. When our states came into 
being, their inhabitants found themselves con- 
fronted with a new situation. Old things had 
passed away and they had a clear field before 
them. 

They had been accustomed to a good deal of 
self-government as colonies, they were relatively 
new communities, and they were thrown upon 
their own resources. Several states found them- 
selves with very similar problems upon their 
hands, and, solving them in a somewhat similar 
way, they attained to a large measure of uni- 
formity. To the federal constitution which they 
adopted, new states were compelled to adjust 
themselves. The new states, moreover, were 
peopled largely by those who had come from the 
older states and who brought with them their old 
traditions. The constitutions of our states are 
not identical, but they are made upon the same 
plan, nevertheless. They are, in theory, thor- 
oughly democratic. 

As was indicated in the last chapter, the con- 
ditions in Germany were very different when 
the German Empire came into being. Vested 

29 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

rights were recognized; old traditions were re- 
spected. The German states are not organized 
after any uniform plan. They did not break 
with the past, but brought with them into the 
Union what they already possessed. The Em- 
pire is in certain respects extraordinarily toler- 
ant. It can take up into itself states which 
are conservative and aristocratic and states 
which enjoy a republican form of govern- 
ment. 

We have seen that the upper federal chamber 
represents the governments of the several states. 
If these states are liberal, their representatives 
will be liberal. We have seen that the lower 
chamber, which has control of the imperial 
finances, is elected on the basis of universal suf- 
frage, by a direct and secret vote. We have 
also seen that the ministry is in practice, al- 
though not in theory, responsible to this cham- 
ber. 

Such a constitution does not impress one as 
undemocratic, and it puts no small measure of 
power into the hands of the people. If the peo- 
ple split into parties and quarrel with each other, 

30 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

instead of working for the common good, the 
fault is their own. They could have a great 
influence if they chose to exercise it. It is 
worthy of remark, that the present "Reichstag" 
(in 1 915), out of a total membership of 397, 
counts no Social-Democrats, and about 88 Lib- 
erals. The "Center," or Catholic party, has some 
84 votes, and favors social legislation. The Con- 
servatives, taken together, count less votes than 
any of the other parties enumerated. 

The political rights of the people in the several 
states vary with the states. I suppose no one, 
calling a state into being in our day, and in- 
fluenced by traditions, would think of creating 
such a chamber as legislates for the little duchy 
of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. The constitution of 
this duchy was granted in 1816 by Charles 
Augustus, the enlightened patron of Goethe, and 
it was revised in 1850 and again in 1906. The 
diet consists of one chamber with thirty-eight 
members, of whom five are chosen by owners of 
land, five by other property owners, five by the 
University of Jena and other public bodies and 
twenty-three by the rest of the inhabitants. The 

3 1 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

chamber votes the budget, and all male citizens 
over twenty-one years of age are entitled to vote. 

Such a constitution is a heritage from the 
past, and, like most heritages from the past, 
it represents actually existent interests of some 
sort which men are inclined to acknowledge. 
Like our common law, it is not the creature of 
pure reason, but is a growth, and it has its roots 
in an earlier age. Whether it will work satisfac- 
torily or not, will depend upon the degree of its 
adjustment to the character of the society which 
lives under it, and to the habits and ways of 
thinking of the people. The American needs to 
remind himself in judging of such constitutions, 
that the German people are, as a rule, attached 
to their traditions, and have a feeling of affection 
for their princes, by whom they expect to be 
treated with consideration. 

Where the German states have two chambers, 
the composition of the upper chamber is not, ac- 
cording to our notions, democratic. Thus, in 
Bavaria, membership in the upper house is 
determined by heredity, by the incumbency of 
certain important offices in the state, by the in- 

3 2 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

cumbency of certain ecclesiastical positions, and 
by royal appointment. Membership in the lower 
house, on the other hand, rests upon the prin- 
ciple of universal suffrage. The houses are 
called together every two years, and must ap- 
prove the budget. No laws affecting the liberty 
or property of citizens can be passed without 
their consent. 

As in Bavaria, so in Prussia, the membership 
of the upper house is not determined by the 
popular vote. That of the lower house depends 
upon universal suffrage, but property qualifica- 
tions here play a significant role. The consent 
of the King and of both chambers must be ob- 
tained, before a measure can become law. The 
chambers have the control of the finances, the 
lower house first discussing the budget, which 
can be accepted or rejected by the upper house 
only as a whole. 

The few illustrations which I have given will 
serve to make clear that the political rights of 
the Germans are not identical with ours. It 
should be equally clear, however, that they have 
very significant political rights, nevertheless. 

33 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

The citizen ultimately controls the finances both 
of the states and of the Empire, and, as we all 
know, money is the nerve both of peace and of 
war. 

Changes are going on in Germany, and the in- 
fluence of the democratic spirit is making itself 
more and more felt. But I do not here wish to 
dwell upon this. I wish rather to emphasize the 
conservative, the traditional and the aristocratic 
elements in the German constitutions, in order 
to bring out a very curious circumstance. As 
I have come to understand the working of the 
German governments, the matter has interested 
me no little, and I think it well worth while to 
call it to the attention of my countrymen. This 
subject will fill the rest of this chapter. 

Government for the People 

We Americans are fond of maintaining that 
a government should be of the people, by the peo- 
ple, and for the people. Our suffrage gives us, 
in theory, at least, a government of the people. 
Experience has taught us that it is no easy mat- 
ter to secure a government by such of the people 

34 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

as are enlightened and disinterested, and to that 
end we bend our efforts. Upon the difficulties 
connected with securing a government for the 
people, which will insure a measure of well being 
to all classes, and will prevent the rapacious 
from robbing their neighbors, I need scarcely 
dwell. Under many forms of government the 
rich may become dangerously rich and powerful, 
and the poor may be sent empty away. But, as 
good Americans, our hope is in democracy in 
general, and, more specifically, in the form of 
democracy which we ourselves enjoy. 

Far be it from me to say a word against the 
form of government under which I have been 
brought up, which I revere, and the disadvan- 
tages of which I regard as extraneous and acci- 
dental rather than as inherent and essential. 
Still, I recognize that a nation cannot strip off 
its past with impunity, any more than a man 
can, with right and impunity, rid himself of his 
family. And it is only gradually that I have been 
brought to the realization that a government, 
which the average American would not be in- 
clined to describe as of the people and by the 

35 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

people, may, nevertheless, be most emphatically 
a government for the people ; not for a caste, not 
for a class, not for the few, but for the people 
as such, including the poor, the weak, the in- 
articulate. Men who have long nursed the 
popular prejudice against the traditional mother- 
in-law have been brought to confess that, in in- 
dividual cases, the incumbent of the office in 
question may be both a good woman and pleas- 
ant to live with. 

Those who know Germany well are compelled 
to admit that the German government is a govern- 
ment for the people, and is both just and benevo- 
lent. I may mention in passing that, as I write 
these lines, in Munich, in war time, the bread 
which I eat contains a certain proportion of 
wheat flour and a certain proportion of rye. The 
government of the Empire has determined to 
make it certain that all classes of the population 
shall be secured from hardship until the next 
crops are harvested. The amount of bread 
which I may buy is regulated by law, as is the 
amount of flour. I submit to such regulations, 
not only with willingness, but, as one interested 

3.6 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

in social reform, with pride and pleasure. The 
Emperor is eating the same bread. The highest 
officials in Bavaria, civil and military, are limited 
in their purchases as I am; I am allowed just 
what is allowed to my cook. When one knows 
that all are treated alike, small privations are no 
longer a burden. No man is exploiting me. 
Speculation in foodstuffs is repressed. Any 
sacrifice which I make ceases to be a sacrifice, 
because it is a contribution to the common good. 
But to return to my task, which I must here ful- 
fill very briefly. 

The People and the Courts of Justice 

I suppose that one of the best indications that a 
given government is carried on in the interests 
cf the people is that the people themselves have 
an unshaken confidence in the justice of the 
courts to which they may appeal in defense of 
their rights. It is an indication no less signifi- 
cant, when access to the courts is made easy to all 
classes, even to the poorest. The Germans go 
to law easily, for it is easy to go to law, and 
the expenses are relatively slight. The lawyer 

37 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

may not charge an arbitrary fee, for the law 
regulates the matter. And certain classes of 
persons do not have to pay any fee at all. 

As to the impartial administration of justice, 
in a land which is sometimes described as bureau- 
cratic, it is worth while to quote the opinion of 
a socialist and radical, a scholar of standing, who 
has himself, in doing what seemed to him his 
duty as a reformer, come into conflict with the 
government. A few years ago I asked him, 
having a particular case in mind, whether a state 
official would have an advantage in the courts 
over a private citizen, when both were parties 
to a suit. He answered that, especially if the 
official appeared as plaintiff or defendant in his 
private capacity, it was hardly conceivable that 
he should have any advantage whatever. 

It is my observation that the people, from the 
humblest maid-servant up, have confidence in 
the courts, and readily carry before them their 
real or fancied grievances. Sometimes they are 
fancied grievances, but they can, at least, get a 
hearing. Poverty need not prevent a servant 
from bringing suit against an employer, for the 

38 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

servant can claim "Armenrecht," that is, can 
have the case conducted without expense to him- 
self. Had I a suit with one of my servants, I 
should, on the whole, look for justice, but I 
should expect a court, if there were any "par- 
tiality," to be biassed rather on the side of the 
servant than on mine. The "Existenz-Frage," 
as it is called, the problem of getting a living, 
looms large on the horizon in Germany, and oc- 
cupies the public attention. It is this that has 
led to the elaborate system of social legislation 
which characterizes the nation. 

The Right to a Living 

The population is much denser in Germany 
than it is in the United States. As a rule, men 
have to make a more thorough preparation, and 
to wait longer, before they get the." ' start in life. 
Americans are impressed by the large numbers 
of well prepared men, who are waiting for posi- 
tions of all sorts, in many of which the remu- 
neration must seem to any American surpris- 
ingly small. This is true not merely of positions 
in the gift of the government. It is true gener- 

39 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

ally. The situation results, to be sure, in the 
selection of thoroughly prepared men to fill the 
positions in question ; but it reveals that the prob- 
lem of earning a living in Germany, as elsewhere 
in Europe, is a serious one. It must be solved, 
if suffering is to be avoided, by deliberate 
thought and attention. These it has received. 

There is a prevailing sentiment in all parts oi 
Germany that men should not lightly or suddenly 
be deprived of their means of a livelihood. Em- 
ployers, whether the state, private corporations, 
or individuals, have laid upon their shoulders 
responsibilities for their employees which must 
seem, to those unaccustomed to the system, bur- 
densome. There is a strong tendency to render 
all sorts of positions relatively permanent, and 
to define in detail the rights of those who oc- 
cupy them. For the vast number of officials — the 
term is a very inclusive one — in the service of 
the state, or in that of the communities within 
the state, for the employees of rail-roads, 
street-car lines, etc., generally, the whole matter 
has been worked out in minute detail. Nor have 

those in private service been overlooked. We 

40 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

Americans are. of course, not unfamiliar with 
somewhat similar legislation, but in no land has 
it reached the development that it has among the 
Germans. 

Here in Bavaria, for example, if I wish to 
get rid of a servant, I must give her notice on 
or before the fifteenth of the month, the notice 
to take effect on the first of the month following. 
I must allow the servant, in the two weeks inter- 
vening, a certain number of outings to look for 
another place. If I delay my notice until the 
sixteenth, I must tolerate the unwelcome do- 
mestic for six weeks longer. Should I prefer 
to get rid of her at any price, I must pay her, 
not merely her wages, but also a sum to cover 
her board and lodging up to the legal date. 
Such legal provisions may easily be an annoy- 
ance to the employer. It is not all employees 
who seem to deserve so much consideration. 
But it is surely better that the well-to-do should 
suffer some inconvenience than that those who 
have their daily bread to earn should run the 
risk of being brought to distress. The relative 
stability of employment in Germany everywhere 

41 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

impresses the American. He is the more im- 
pressed, when he reflects that the number of 
those seeking positions renders it by no means 
difficult to fill vacant places. In certain higher 
positions, as in the public libraries and about 
the universities, the incumbent of an office can 
be gotten rid of only by process of law. 

The organization of society in Germany has 
resulted in an enormous extension of the pen- 
sion system. A man is provided for in his old 
age, and, in case of his death, his family receives 
assistance. The pension system may become a 
grave abuse, as we Americans well know. But 
rightly managed it may be an inestimable benefit. 

The German who accepts a pension, whether 
he be a conductor on a tram-line or a university 
professor, does not feel that he is accepting 
charity. The pension is regarded .as a part of 
the remuneration for work done, and the benefit 
is as a rule the greater as the term of service is 
longer. Where men feel secure in their tenure 
of office, and know that their families are not 
threatened with disaster in case of their death or 
retirement from disability, they are willing to 

42 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

work contentedly on a moderate income. And 
it is worthy of remark that the whole system 
tends to encourage honesty and faithfulness in 
the service rendered. The average of honesty 
of German officials of all classes, many of whom 
draw surprisingly small salaries, is exceedingly 
high. 

Social Legislation for Workers 

In 1883 the Reichstag, in harmony with the 
policy announced by the Emperor in his speech 
from the throne in 1881, enacted a law making 
compulsory upon workers in industrial pursuits 
insurance against sickness, accident and incapac- 
ity. The legislation thus initiated has been ex- 
tended. At present there is in the German 
states an elaborate system of insurance against 
sickness, old age, invalidity and accident. Many 
classes of persons are thus provided for. Among 
those who may share, for example, in the bene- 
fits of the laws regarding insurance against old 
age and invalidity, enemies which threaten us 
all, are domestic servants, artisans, laundresses, 
seamstresses) dressmakers, housekeepers, fore- 

43 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

men and journeymen. The same right is enjoyed 
by teachers in private schools, by private tutors, 
and by employees in mercantile establishments, 
provided their yearly earnings fall below a cer- 
tain fixed sum. In the case of the last class 
mentioned, a participation in the benefits of the 
insurance is voluntary. A part of the expense 
of the contribution is paid by the employer, 
where the insurance is obligatory, and a part by 
the employee. At any rate such is the legal 
provision, but, especially in the case of domestic 
servants, etc., it is not unusual for the employer 
to pay the whole. On him devolves the duty of 
seeing to it that the provisions of the law are 
obeyed. 

It is scarcely too much to say that there are 
very few Germans, indeed, who are not provided 
for by the law, in some way, and to some extent, 
if they become incapable of self-support. They 
may receive very little, and it may be eminently 
desirable that public aid should be supplemented 
by private charity. But they are, at least, saved 
from falling into the class of the submerged. 
And as everyone is under inspection, and should 

44 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

have papers of some sort, it is possible to know 
something about the cases that seem to need 
assistance. The laws regarding the compulsory 
insurance of the working classes have done much 
to reduce both pauperism and crime. Begging is 
reduced to a minimum and is discouraged. 

To be sure, it is easier to get rid of a beggar 
by giving him a little money, than it is to take 
the time and trouble to look into his claims to 
assistance. Germans succumb to this weakness, 
as well as Americans, and it encourages im- 
postors. But it is my experience that Americans 
resident in Germany suffer most from what the 
Germans call "consulate swindlers," that is, from 
men who maintain that they are subjects of this 
or that foreign nation, are temporarily in distress, 
and have a claim upon the sympathies of their 
alleged countrymen. Some time since, as I was 
chatting with three other Americans, I happened 
to touch upon a case which had moved my sym- 
pathies and had elicited a small contribution. I 
discovered that all three of the other men present 
had been taken in as well as I. One had given 
the man money for a ticket to Nuremberg, the 

45 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

second had paid his way to Innsbruck, and the 
third had helped him on his road to Stuttgart. 
As "an American citizen temporarily in distress," 
he had no papers, but he had a plausible tongue 
and a sore leg which he exhibited with effect. 
Such "Americans" usually speak English imper- 
fectly or with a foreign accent, but they are most 
insistent in their claims. In Munich, the Ger- 
mans, who put every class under inspection, have 
appointed an official with the title "Police-officer 
for Consulate-Swindlers." To this official I had 
recourse, after endeavoring to look personally 
into the last three cases in which I was appealed 
to. In each case I had been given a false ad- 
dress. 

Germany is no paradise for the vagrant, but 
the poor man who is properly accounted for is 
not left to his own resources. It is. a part of the 
aid given by the state to the humbler classes that 
medical advice may be had gratis by those prop- 
erly insured. And, especially in recent years, an 
earnest effort has been made to guard the health 
and comfort of the workers while they are still 
able to work. We are ourselves familiar with 

4 6 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

factory-inspection, and with the limitation of the 
hours of labor. The problem of rendering the 
life of the working man in Germany tolerable to 
him, and not unhygienic, is being worked out 
with characteristic thoroughness. Everybody 
and everything appears to be inspected by some 
official. Those of us who do not come under the 
social legislation I am discussing are accustomed 
to drive ourselves as it is not possible for an em- 
ployer to drive his employee. This seems just. 
He who drives himself does it for his own 
profit; he who is driven by another is making a 
profit for someone other than himself. Against 
such an exploitation of man by his fellowman 
the German law enters its veto. 

The Taxation of the People in Germany 

The little-appreciated privilege of paying taxes 
is one common to men of all nations, but the 
principle according to which taxes are levied is 
by no means the same everywhere. In one land 
the taxes bear very hard upon the poor; in 
another, those who possess little are treated with 
indulgence. 

47 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

In Germany the Federal Government derives 
its income partly from customs, duties, inherit- 
ance taxes, profits from the posts and telegraphs, 
etc., and partly from contributions levied upon 
the states composing the Empire. In the several 
states the principles of taxation are virtually the 
same, and a single instance will serve to illustrate 
their spirit. I choose Bavaria, because that king- 
dom has recently revised its system of taxation 
and has expressly made the effort to profit by 
the experience of the other states. 

He who studies the Bavarian tax-laws is, from 
beginning to end, impressed by the fact that it 
was the evident intention of those who framed 
them to make the taxes rest lightly upon the poor, 
and to lay the heaviest part of the burden upon 
stronger shoulders. One circumstance may seem 
to contradict this conclusion. Very small in- 
comes are taxed, and classes of persons who, in 
our country, pay no tax at all have to pay some 
tax in Bavaria. But this provision was delib- 
erately made to guard the self-respect of those 
of small means, and to prevent their being classed 
with paupers, bankrupts, and those generally who 

4 8 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

are treated as though they owed the state noth- 
ing. It is worthy of note that the party which 
most earnestly insisted upon the taxation of small 
incomes was that of the Social-Democrats, who, 
especially, champion the cause of the poor man. 

The Bavarian system of taxation rests mainly 
upon the taxation of incomes. Income earned 
from year to year is taxed at a lower rate than 
income from investments, which is decidedly a 
favoring of the non-capitalist class. And the tax 
on incomes, whether from earnings or from in- 
vested money, is a progressive one. In turning 
over the little volume which contains the tax laws 
passed for the kingdom in 19 10, I find a tariff for 
the computation of taxes comprehending two 
hundred and eleven classes, with an appendix 
giving rules to cover, by a further progressive 
increase, the incomes of the very rich. The poor 
pay a tax which is merely nominal; the total in- 
come tax, including state, district and city taxes, 
may fall within seventy-five cents. There are, 
moreover, provisions for the relief of those who, 
although not very poor, seem to have special 
claims to consideration. Thus, the parents that 

49 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

are rearing a family of children have a right to 
be taxed at a lower rate than the couple living 
in solitary comfort. 

Direct taxes are, I suppose, liked by no one. 
He who pays is too conscious that he is being 
taxed. Nevertheless, the humanitarian, who 
realizes that a man may feel the effects of taxes 
every day without realizing clearly that what he 
suffers is the result of taxation, must welcome 
any system which lays the burden of supporting 
the state chiefly upon those who can afford to 
carry it, refusing to raise, by indirect taxation, 
the price of the necessaries of life to a point at 
which they are almost beyond the reach of a con- 
siderable portion of the population. Those of 
us who know Italy have observed the workings 
of the system of indirect taxation upon the prices 
of commodities which the masses can ill afford to 
do without. The indirect taxes in Germany are 
not oppressive to the masses. 

I have no desire to recommend any or all of 
the measures which the German states have 
thought fit to pass in order to pay the expenses 
of their governments. Taxation is a science of 

so 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

itself, and the layman has little right to express 
an opinion. But it has inspired me, an American, 
with a lively curiosity, to see in this field, as in 
the field of social legislation discussed above, that 
forms of government, which it would not occur 
to the American to call democratic, and which 
contain certain elements foreign to his notion of 
what constitutes a government of and by the 
people, should legislate distinctly for the people. 
These governments exercise a paternalism which 
is all-embracing. They are penetrated by a cer- 
tain spirit of fairness, and they appear to make 
it a fundamental maxim that the mass of the 
citizens have a right to an endurable existence 
and must not be exploited in the interests of any 
class. To regard them as governments for a 
class is absurd. Whether they have a logical 
right to the title or not, they are in fact govern- 
ments for the people. 

German Rights and American Impressions 
I have indicated above that the American is 
more conscious of being governed in Germany 
than in his own country. He is not infrequently 

51 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

confronted by the sign "forbidden by the police," 
and it takes him some time to discover that the 
word "police" does not mean at all what it does 
with us, but includes the whole machinery which 
has to do with the protection of the workers, 
factory inspection, etc., and that it even extends 
to the cleaning of the streets in the cities. 

Still, the American is long impressed by the 
number of the things that are forbidden. Not 
only is his neighbor forbidden to do things that 
will annoy him, but he himself appears to be 
forbidden to injure himself in the many ways 
open to a freeman of courage and independence. 
The citizen is taken care of, and it is not every- 
one who wishes -to be taken care of. 

Furthermore, as we have seen, in Germany a 
man is made his brother's keeper. If he is an 
employer of labor, he is forced into the paternal 
attitude, which, to be sure, many American 
employers of labor, individuals and corporations, 
voluntarily assume, but which all are not forced 
to assume. The obligation is distasteful to 
many. 

If the American is a house-holder in Germany, 

52 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

he is very conscious that he has servants with 
definite rights established either by law or by a 
custom which seems to have an equivalent sanc- 
tion, and not with rights which they merely arro- 
gate to themselves. He forgets to paste upon the 
cards furnished for the purpose the invalid-in- 
surance stamps required by law ; he does not keep 
track of the many public holidays observed in 
most of the German states, and he suffers in- 
convenience. However, everything has its two 
sides, as I discovered when my cook went raving 
mad, and the possession of a small strip of paper, 
showing that she was properly insured, made 
it possible for me to telephone and to have her 
taken by the proper officials to the Psychiatrical 
Clinic, placed under the supervision of the fa- 
mous Kraepelin, and cared for as well as if she 
were a woman of means. She was not treated 
as a pauper, and I was not put to any trouble or 
expense. I had done my part and the govern- 
ment did the rest. The responsibility for others 
laid in Germany upon the shoulders of those who 
are at all well-to-do comes to be regarded by the 
American as less burdensome, when he learns 

53 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

to understand its significance. But he can hardly 
be expected to discover at once that he has to- 
wards the charwoman who regularly makes her 
appearance upon his premises other duties than 
those of paying her and treating her civilly. 

Upon certain rights an emphasis is laid in Ger- 
many that must seem to those brought up in 
other lands strange and unusual. We believe in 
free competition in business; so does the Ger- 
man. But he regards some kinds of competi- 
tion as unfair, and it does not strike him as 
improper to have a law against unfair competi- 
tion. Thus, one may not advertise a clearing- 
out sale to close a business, and then profit by 
the sale without clearing-out and closing. Upon 
his right, not merely to compete in business, but 
to enjoy fair conditions of competition, the Ger- 
man insists. 

Again, it appears to be accepted that even the 
poor man has a certain right to his self-respect. 
A man may not with impunity be called by of- 
fensive names, even if he occupy a very humble 
position. Furthermore, it is recognized that men 
have a certain right to their privacy. Their 

54 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

neighbors may not circulate injurious reports 
about them, even if the reports be true. The 
right to privacy is, in certain cases, carefully 
maintained even against the government. The 
bank with which we have our dealings may not 
give information about our financial affairs even 
to the tax-office. All its officers are bound to 
secrecy. For this peculiar provision there seem 
to be palpable economic grounds. 

Whom does the German Obey? 

The more the American looks into the actual 
workings of government in Germany, the more 
he is impressed with the fact that, although the 
German is very thoroughly governed, he is gov- 
erned in his own interests. Life is tolerable for 
all classes, and not merely for the high-born and 
the rich. The military officer, honored, it may 
be, but, according to our notions, underpaid and 
often hard- worked, is as much under authority 
as is any civilian. All are taught to obey; all 
have their burdens to bear. The German belongs 
to the state and he is educated to believe that 
he owes something to the state and that the state 

55 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

owes him a good deal. Upon his rights he insists, 
and in Germany that often comes under the head 
of right which in other lands comes under the 
head of charity. 

Whom does the German ultimately obey? To 
this question I can give no other answer than: 
He obeys the state. If he obeys an individual 
he obeys him only as the representative of the 
state. The whole complicated machine is not 
constructed and carried on in the interests of 
given individuals or given classes, although, as 
we have seen, traditional rights have not been 
swept away in the process of evolution through 
which the German nation has been going. The 
Germans have been experimenting as we have. 
Their instinct has been for progress, in the 
avoidance of revolution. It seems sufficiently 
curious that the extensive reforms' in social legis- 
lation discussed above should have received their 
initial impulse from an Emperor, and should 
have had the active support of the Social-Demo- 
cratic party. Whatever aristocratic and con- 
servative elements the German governments may 
retain, they have not been found incompatible 

56 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

with the introduction of such reforms, nor have 
they shaken the conviction of the German that 
his government exists for and in the interest of 
the German people. The arbitrary exercise of 
power by any German official is sure to give rise 
to indignation. 

Americans who have come to know Germany 
well have often remarked to me : "The German 
government, whatever its constitution, has stolen 
their thunder from the Socialists." It is perhaps 
not well to use a word which has, for many 
persons, objectionable associations. But the truth 
should be acknowledged that the often-remarked 
willing obedience of the German to the consti- 
tuted authorities has its roots in the conviction 
that he is not yielding obedience to an arbitrary 
power, but is bowing to the state, which exists 
in his interests, and of which he feels himself to 
be a part. 

Summary 

We see, thus, that the German citizen lives 
under a federal government not so very dis- 
similar from our own; that he has, under the 

57 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

Federal Government, significant political rights, 
and is by the Federal Government guaranteed a 
multitude of private rights, in whatever German 
state he may have his domicile. The supposed 
dictatorial power of the Emperor is a chimera. 
We have seen, furthermore, that the several 
German states, whatever traditional conservative 
elements their constitutions may retain, grant to 
their citizens political rights of a good deal of 
importance. And we have seen that the courts 
are just, the officials surprisingly honest, and the 
private rights of German citizens well protected. 
Social legislation for the workers is most ex- 
tensive and is efficiently organized; there is an 
effort made to spare the poor man the burden 
of unjust and excessive taxes. In short, the 
Germany of to-day is not the Germany which 
Carl Schurz and men like him left to seek a 
refuge elsewhere. Such men stay at home now; 
and, as a German scholar, animated by much the 
same spirit as Schurz, remarked to me lately, it 
is the harder to introduce reforms, as the German 
government is a good government and most men 
do not feel acute and pressing grievances. 

58 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

Under the circumstances it is absurd to speak 
of the German people as groaning under a yoke 
of any kind. As long as there is life and growth 
in the nation, there will and there ought to be 
some discontent and a disposition to introduce 
reforms. We Americans have, for our benefit, 
the same spirit. We are never content, and we 
ought not to be content; neither should the Ger- 
man. But any reforms which he introduces 
will probably not be uninfluenced by his tradi- 
tions and the actual position in which he finds 
himself. We have practically a 'continent to 
ourselves; we live in a villa. The German oc- 
cupies a flat, and he is more conscious of his 
neighbors. He cannot introduce reforms without 
bearing that fact in mind, as we shall see in 
Chapter V. 



CHAPTER III 

THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE 
IN GERMANY 

ANY account of German national life which 
would omit a description of the education 
of the German people would be as incomplete as 
the play of Hamlet with that problematical hero 
wholly left out. 

Germany cannot be understood at all by one 
who knows nothing of its system of education. 
There is no subject, not even that of the national 
defenses, to which the German has devoted more 
careful attention. There is no institution of the 
state upon which he is more willing to spend 
money and labor than upon the system of schools, 
lower and higher. It is education that has made 
Germany what it is, and Germany knows it. 

The belief in education is in Germany a re- 
ligion. That every citizen has a right to a reason- 

60 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

ably good education is an article of faith. The 
popular support given to the public school system 
in our great democracy shows that we occupy 
much the same standpoint as the Germans. We 
believe that the citizens must be educated or the 
state will suffer. "How can the children learn 
if they ain't got no slates?" I heard a local 
school-director waiting for a car, in Philadel- 
phia, angrily vociferate to two less intelligent 
fellow-citizens. All honor to the man, in spite 
of his defective English. He was a prophet of 
enlightenment, and he wanted to insure to the 
rising generation some of the good things that 
he had missed. 

Sometimes the enthusiasm for education which 
permeates the German people shows itself in 
amusing ways. A cook whom I employed sixteen 
years ago, when I spent a year and a half in Ger- 
many, afterwards kept up a correspondence with 
my wife's maid, an Englishwoman. She ex- 
pressed in one of her letters some dissatisfaction 
with the position she had found after leaving me. 
Her master was a baron and lived in a castle 
upon his own estates. But, as the cook wrote 

61 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

with disapprobation, the nobleman in question 
was not a scholar and he appeared to be inter- 
ested only in agriculture. To be sure, all German 
cooks do not have the same reverence for pro- 
fessors. 

The Schools for the People 

The percentage of illiteracy in the German 
states is practically a negligible quantity. As 
determined by the examinations of the recruits 
for the compulsory military service, it falls in 
Bavaria to one hundredth of one per cent. That 
is to say, only one man in ten thousand is classed 
as illiterate. In Prussia the number is four men 
in ten thousand, the character of the population 
in the less-civilized East upon the Russian border 
accounting for the difference. 

The education of the people is compulsory in 
all the German states; and in all, except in the 
two minute grand-duchies of Mecklenburg, the 
first eight years of school life are practically the 
same. 

The primary schools claim the children from 

their sixth to their fourteenth year. They are 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

there taught reading, writing, arithmetic, the 
elements of geometry, history, geography, the 
elements of physics and chemistry, a little zoology 
and botany, German literature and composition. 
They also receive instruction in religion, in draw- 
ing, in singing and in gymnastics. The teaching 
is very thorough, and is everywhere under the 
supervision of the state. 

As may readily be seen, the child who starts 
out in life with such an equipment is fitted to 
become something more than a tool in the hands 
of others. In the cities, boys often receive in- 
struction in manual training, and the girls in 
house-work and needle-work, but this is not the 
case everywhere. In the country, the additional 
instruction may be, respectively, in fruit-farming 
and in needle-work. 

There is one aspect of the school-life of the 
child in Germany upon which it seems especially 
worth while to dwell. In Southern Germany, at 
least, it is expected that the children of all classes 
of the population, even the highest, should, dur- 
ing the first years of their education, attend the 
public primary or "people's" schools. Attend- 

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GERMANY OF. TO-DAY 

ance upon other schools is discouraged, and per- 
mission to attend pay-schools is granted only in 
special cases and for cause. One of the most 
common excuses urged is that the health of the 
child will not permit of the usual schooling. In 
North Germany there are public pay-schools 
which lead up to the higher schools, and to these 
the richer classes are apt to send their children. 

The arrangement in South Germany is the 
more democratic, but, in the opinion of many, it 
does not go far enough. There is a good deal 
of agitation among educators in Germany in 
favor of making certain changes in the school 
courses and compelling all children between the 
years of six and fourteen to attend the same 
public primary schools. It is thought that the 
whole body of future citizens should, during the 
first eight years of their schooling, be educated 
together, just as the body of able-bodied male 
citizens come together for a final schooling when 
they receive their military training. The agita- 
tion is prompted by democratic sentiment and is 
urged in the interest of the state. 



6 4 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

The Continuation-Schools 

Compulsory education in the regular schools 
is at an end when the child is fourteen years old. 
But even a bright child of fourteen, taken out 
of school and set to work under unfavorable 
circumstances, may become dulled and lifeless, 
unpromising material for citizenship in any walk 
in life. Character is unformed; the significance 
of education has not yet become apparent; the 
child has not learned to think for himself, and he 
must be saved from himself. 

To accomplish this purpose the continuation- 
schools have been founded to meet the needs of 
those whose parents cannot afford to keep them 
longer in school. In all of the German states 
attendance is obligatory in towns of over 10,000 
inhabitants. In the country, and in small towns, 
it is obligatory except in Prussia and in Meck- 
lenburg. The pupils must attend for at least two 
years after the completion of the primary school 
course. In the larger towns attendance is com- 
pulsory at least until the completion of their 
seventeenth year. 

65 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

What is Taught in Continuation-Schools 

The continuation-schools are divided into two 
groups, those for skilled workers and those for 
children who will become unskilled laborers. 

Boys who attend the schools for skilled 
workers receive direct vocational training, and 
instruction regarding materials, tools and the 
making of estimates of costs. They are further 
instructed in physics and chemistry, geometry, 
drawing, bookkeeping, civics and German liter- 
ature. In Munich, Strasburg and Diisseldorf 
they learn shop-work. 

Boys who are to remain unskilled laborers 
receive instruction in arithmetic, German liter- 
ature, civics, and what is called "Heimatkunde," 
i.e., information regarding the industrial and 
economic conditions of the state or district in 
which the school is situated. 

Girls are, like boys, divided into the classes of 
those who are to follow skilled occupations and 
those who are not. The former receive instruc- 
tion analogous to that provided for boys of the 
first class. The latter are taught all kinds of 

66 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

house-work and needle-work, bookkeeping for 
the home, and some literature and arithme- 
tic. 

Instruction in continuation-schools is not as 
yet obligatory for girls in all the German states 
to the same extent as it is for boys. It is, how- 
ever, obligatory in all the larger towns, and in 
Southern Germany it is obligatory also in rural 
districts. 

Pupils in the continuation-schools receive from 
six to ten hours of instruction a week in the 
towns, and from three to four in the country. All 
instruction is free, and employers are compelled, 
under heavy penalties, to make it possible for the 
boys and girls to attend. The influence of the 
whole system towards raising the general average 
of intelligence among the workers of the nation 
can scarcely be overestimated. 

The Secondary Schools 

Parents who can keep their children at school 
longer than the German law compels them to do 
so, do not keep them at the primary or people's 
schools up to their fourteenth year. At about 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

their ninth or tenth year they transfer them to 
the lowest class of a secondary school. The 
German secondary schools covering, loosely 
speaking, the ground covered by our public gram- 
mar-schools and high-schools, although they 
carry the students further, are some of them 
chiefly classical and some chiefly scientific in 
character. There is no need of my describing 
them in detail. The course extends over nine 
years and is a very thorough one. There is only 
one circumstance upon which, in this connection. 
I need dwell, and that is the class of pupils by 
which they are frequented. 

The government keeps a record of the occupa- 
tions followed by the parents, and I recently 
examined, with much curiosity, such a list, indi- 
cating the classes of society represented in one of 
the large public schools in Munich. Along with 
the children of what are, even with us, sometimes 
unhappily called the "upper classes" of the popu- 
lation, I found abundantly represented the chil- 
dren of street-car conductors, travelling sales- 
men, house-painters, postmen, electricians, milk- 
men, head-waiters, janitors, locomotive-engineers, 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

switchmen, bakers, stokers, coopers, and chimney- 
sweeps. 

This is a striking circumstance. Education, 
even the higher education, is, in Germany, not 
the portion of the few. Where there is a will 
to rise in the world, and even a moderate degree 
of ability, there is always a way. For this the 
cheapness of education in Germany, of which 
I shall soon speak, is largely responsible. 

Attendance upon the schools in question opens 
up the road to a vast number of careers. Through 
these schools lies the path which leads to the 
universities, the technical schools, and the other 
higher professional schools. But those who at- 
tend them also become eligible, without going so 
far, to countless positions in the gift of the state 
or under the municipal governments, to posts in 
the higher industries, and to careers in banking 
and commerce. Education in Germany is in 
theory and in practice thoroughly democratic. 
Neither wealth nor social position will enable a 
student to pass the inevitable state-examinations, 
and, without that qualification, men find all sorts 
of careers closed to them. 

6 9 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

The Highest Schools 

The German uses the word "High-school" to 
describe the universities and various professional 
schools which he considers as of the same grade, 
such as schools of technology, forestry, agri- 
culture, etc. Admission to these is carefully 
guarded, for the requirements for admission are 
high. But the poverty of the student need be 
no barrier. I know German students well, and 
can testify, not merely that many of them are 
very poor, but that numbers come from among 
the simplest classes of the population. How, in 
view of their poverty, so many of them have 
managed to get so far is to me a mystery. They 
are, to be sure, willing to undergo hardship — of 
this I have seen a good deal among our own 
students in America — and here -and there they 
receive aid from the state or from private sources. 

Somehow they do manage to live, for we do 
not find them starving to death. It was an Amer- 
ican\Megro who complained that his prayer for 
daily bread was not answered precisely as he 
had hoped. He got his daily bread, he said, but 

70 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

the Lord starved him until he could eat any- 
thing, and that was the way in which he got it. 
Some German students can claim to have had a 
similar experience. However, they beat their 
way through, and there are those among them 
who rise to eminence and repay the state a 
hundredfold for the cost of their education. 

The Cost of an Education in Germany, 

In the primary schools tuition is free in the 
towns and in many rural districts. Elsewhere it 
costs from fifty cents to a dollar and a half a 
year. In the secondary schools in Bavaria, it 
costs about a dollar a month; in Prussia it costs 
about three dollars and a half. The poorer chil- 
dren in the primary schools receive their text- 
books from the state ; the others do not. In the 
universities, a course of one hour a week for 
one term (it comprises about twenty lectures) 
costs a dollar. 

As may readily be seen, neither the lower 
schools nor the higher are carried on upon a 
paying basis. The state offers tuition practically 
for nothing; it must look elsewhere than to 

71 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

tuition fees for a return on its expenditure. 
Where does it get its return? Just where our 
states get their return for what they spend on the 
education of the people. 

The Gain to Germany 

There is no gain to a country like that derived 
from the possession of an intelligent and dis- 
ciplined population. The primary schools and 
the continuation-schools have been furnishing 
Germany with an army of workers who are not 
mere "hands." The education which they have 
received, and the social legislation in their in- 
terest, with the details of which they are per- 
fectly well acquainted, have already made life take 
on for them less of the aspect of a struggle of 
class against class. Every industry has felt the 
benefit of the rise in the character of the popula- 
tion, and most industries have prospered, in spite 
of the burden imposed upon them by the elabo- 
rate system of insurance for workers. 

Moreover, to the humanitarian it seems no 
small gain that a man's daily work should be 
raised out of the domain of sordid drudgery gone 

72 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

through with only to attain a living wage. The 
man sufficiently intelligent to have a pride and a 
pleasure in his work, and to have some concep- 
tion of the significance of his work in the life of 
the state, is raised upon a higher plane and is 
worthy to be called a citizen. Much as it has cost 
the state, the education of the masses has paid 
for itself in Germany. It is not without its 
significance that poverty need not imply degrada- 
tion, and that the slum is more rarely to be found 
in German cities than in those of most countries. 
Upon the gain which accrues to the state from 
its elaborate and highly democratic system of 
higher education it is almost superfluous to dwell. 
The brains of the state are, directly or indirectly, 
in the service of the state. At the universities 
and in many professional schools thousands of 
able men, selected, as I have indicated above, 
from all classes of society, are trained to increase 
human knowledge and to apply what has already 
been attained to the service of mankind. From 
the higher institutions of learning in Germany 
we Americans have borrowed a very great deal. 
My first visit to Germany thirty-one years ago 

73 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

had as its aim the visiting of a number of uni- 
versities with a view to obtaining hints of which 
I could make direct use at home. At that time 
the majority of our own universities were little 
more than colleges somewhat loosely connected 
with certain professional faculties too often upon 
a proprietary basis. The remarkable development 
which our higher institutions of learning have 
undergone since has kept pace with the develop- 
ment of our country, and bears testimony to the 
energy and enterprise of the American, as well 
as to the disinterested generosity of our com- 
patriots. But that development has not been by 
any means a wholly independent one. 

The Germans have cultivated such seemingly 
unpractical subjects as philology and philosophy. 
But they have cultivated with no less assiduity 
medicine, the mechanic arts, chemistry and 
physics, veterinary medicine, agriculture, forestry 
— in short, all those sciences which make directly 
for the physical and social well-being of man- 
kind. Were it not for the army of well-trained 
men that the German schools have turned out, 
Germany could never have become the rich and 

74 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

prosperous nation that she is to-day. She started, 
and not so very long ago, badly handicapped. 
She is now a formidable competitor in fields 
long regarded by other nations as peculiarly their 
own. Yes, German education has paid. In 
building up their schools the Germans have well 
served themselves, for education has made Ger- 
many. But, incidentally, the Germans have 
served other nations as well, for we have all 
profited by German science and industry. 

Other Educational Factors 

Man shall not live by bread alone, nor shall 
civilized man be accounted as living a wholly 
civilized life, if his education is quite without 
a tincture of certain elements not usually re- 
garded as directly practical. Poetry and music 
have their place in the world as well as chemistry 
and physics. 

Those who appreciate the many-sidedness of 
our modern civilization and believe that man 
should not merely live, but should live well and 
have opened up to him many sources of enjoy- 
ment, regard schools of music and painting as a 

75 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

valuable adjunct to the educational system of a 
state. Somewhat the same can be said for the 
theatre and opera, when they are treated as educa- 
tional institutions, and subsidised so that they 
may serve the purposes of such, not being forced 
to survive only through a successful catering to 
the taste of the unenlightened. 

In Germany the educational system embraces 
such institutions. The capitals of the many Ger- 
man states are provided with them, as well as 
many other towns. It is deemed proper that the 
state should maintain them, and they are not 
compelled to defray their own expenses. The 
son of any peasant, provided he shows himself 
sufficiently talented, finds open to him a career as 
an artist. 

Sometimes the burden of this education in the 
arts which embellish life comes upon the "civil 
list" of the German princes, which be it re- 
marked, should in no wise be confounded with 
the private income of a steel-magnate in America. 
Here in Munich, for example, the excellence 
of the music and the drama is at the royal ex- 
pense. The public parks and that popular resort, 

7 6 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

the garden of the palace, are kept up at the king's 
expense, but they are free to all. I drink my 
coffee on sunny afternoons in the garden of the 
palace; the king does not. Even his house 
scarcely appears to belong to him. A large part 
of it stands open to anyone who cares to ask 
for a card of admission. What treasures of art 
it contains are at the service of anyone, as are 
also the royal collections of art in other build- 
ings. 

The educational opportunities of Germans 
generally are thus not confined to ordinary 
schooling. The people have within their reach 
an education in the fine arts; and many, in all 
walks in life, profit by their opportunities. What 
this means can well be appreciated in a democratic 
land like our own, where it is believed that all 
classes have a moral claim upon the best that 
life has to offer. I can pay a dollar or a dollar 
and a half for an expensive seat at a concert, if 
I choose to do so. My pleasure in listening to 
the excellent music is greatly increased by the 
knowledge that many of those present in the 
cheaper seats or in the standing-room, students 

77 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

and others who have little to spend, are enjoying 
Beethoven and Brahms as I am, but at an ex- 
pense of twelve or fifteen cents — sometimes at 
an expense of only seven and a half. Not a 
few of them are reading the score as they listen. 

The Reading of the German People 

The output of books in Germany is simply 
enormous, and books are an important factor 
in the education of a people. Novels are read, 
of course, but there must be a very large demand 
for books of quite a different kind as well, or 
it would never pay anyone to print them in such 
numbers. It rains books on art, history, eco- 
nomics, politics — on all subjects of serious in- 
terest to the German nation. These books are 
read, not by the few, but by the many. Some 
of them are foolish books, sensational books; 
but some of them, and not the least read, are 
sober and instructive works. 

I have said that those who attend the contin- 
uation-schools receive instruction in civics. I 
may add that the mass of the German people are 
continually receiving such instruction through 

78 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

books containing "Information for the German 
Citizen," published in large editions and sown 
broad-cast among the people. I have just been 
reading such a work. It is one among many, 
but it is in its sixth edition, and I find on the 
title-page "thirty-sixth to thirty-ninth thousand." 
It contains, as do other books of its class, accu- 
rate information regarding the constitution of 
the Empire and the states which compose it, and 
detailed descriptions of the rights and duties of 
all classes of Germans. 

The average German is a well-read and a 
well-informed man. So far as his relation to 
the state is concerned, he is quite as well in- 
structed as is the average American. He knows 
what he can do towards extending his rights 
in legitimate ways, and what he cannot. Some 
Germans are too much occupied with their own 
affairs to give such matters serious attention. 
So also, unhappily, are some Americans. 

Summary 

Germany is thus emphatically the land of edu- 
cation. Illiteracy is practically non-existent. All 

79 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

classes of the population must be educated; upon 
this the government insists. And many classes 
of the population enjoy a high degree of edu- 
cation. The government has made as serious 
an effort as has ever been made by any govern- 
ment to enlighten all its citizens. In this sphere, 
as in others, it has shown itself to be a govern- 
ment for the people, and this should appeal with 
peculiar force to Americans. 

It is worth while to point out that the spread 
of universal enlightenment is not the way to 
secure the tyrannical domination of any "caste." 
In fact, it is the destruction of such a domina- 
tion. In Russia, just across the border of 
Prussia, popular enlightenment is more feared 
than is the bubonic plague. The German thinks 
he has reasons for accepting a strong centralized 
government. Nothing else than this belief can 
account for the attitude taken by so enlightened 
a body of men as the German Social-Democrats 
in the crisis which faced them in 19 14. They 
knew very well that no other government in 
Europe was doing as much for the classes to 

which they exhibit a passionate devotion as was 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

the government of their Empire. I do not be- 
lieve that any government would be strong 
enough to hold down the German nation, edu- 
cated as it is and united as it is, if that nation 
felt that it was suffering under a tyranny. 

One question remains which may naturally 
present itself to the mind of the American. Ger- 
man education does not consist merely in the im- 
parting of information. The German is trained 
to discipline from his earliest years. He learns 
when young to obey, and this discipline is capped 
later by his years of military service. Does he 
suffer in independence of character, in a capacity 
for taking the initiative, in efficiency ? The ques- 
tion is a very fair one. There are few gains 
which must not be purchased at the expense of 
some loss. 

Undoubtedly he who is habitually conscious 
of his place in a larger organism is rendered 
less inclined to quite independent action for 
which there is no precedent. I think the young 
American impresses one as being, in practical 
matters, at least, a more independent man than 
the average young German. Whether this does 

81 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

or does not add to his efficiency as a member 
of the state is another question. That German 
efficiency as a whole has not been diminished by 
the training to which Germans are subjected 
has been made sufficiently evident both in peace 
and in war. In peace, by the extraordinary de- 
velopment of Germany since the foundation of 
the Empire; in war, by what the Germans have 
done on land and sea since August, 1914 



CHAPTER IV 
THE GERMAN PEOPLE AND MILITARISM 

1FIND no institution in Germany more mis- 
understood by the average American than 
is the German army. It is not that we do not 
hear enough about it. We hear about it until 
we are tired of the subject. But the organiza- 
tion of the whole military system remains to us 
a sealed book. 

We are told that the strength of the German 
army, on a peace footing, is over half a million 
men. The number seems appalling. What can 
one do with so many soldiers in time of peace? 
Thousands of us visit Germany every year, and 
we see soldiers everywhere. We hear the meas- 
ured tramp of the sons of Mars in the otherwise 
quiet streets of many towns. The cafes are apt 
to be gay with uniforms. On the morning after 
I spent my first night in Germany, I was awak- 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

ened by the march of a passing regiment, and 
sprang to the window to see the unaccustomed 
sight. What is this standing army of which 
we hear so much, and which forces itself upon 
our attention when we visit our Teutonic neigh- 
bors? How does it happen that it is composed 
almost exclusively of soldiers who are little more 
than boys? 

What is the German Army? 

The figures which I shall give are those of the 
year 1910, the last accurate published statistics 
which I have been able to obtain. In 19 10 the 
army, on a peace footing consisted of 505,839 
men. To this number must be added 14,000 
"one-year volunteers" ("Einjahrige"), to be de- 
scribed below, 85,234 non-commissioned officers 
and 25,519 commissioned officers. - 

These numbers do not quite do justice to the 
force which was in existence before the outbreak 
of the war of 191 4. In 1867 ft was determined 
by law in Prussia that the army should embrace 
one per cent, of the population. This became the 
German standard, but population increased so 

84 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

fast that it was found impracticable to increase 
the army correspondingly. Since 19 10 some 
effort has been made to bring the force up to 
the proportion indicated. The number of officers 
counted upon for the present year I cannot give 
exactly, but the number of soldiers looked for- 
ward to for 191 5 was 661,478. 

How Many are Professional Soldiers? 

It is a colossal blunder to suppose that this 
army, which is, of course, enormous, is com- 
posed of professional soldiers. The common 
soldiers — the overwhelming majority — are 
youths who are undergoing a military training, 
and who have no intention of being soldiers at 
all, unless their country should be overwhelmed 
by the calamity of a war. The tens of thousands 
of soldiers whom the American tourist sees as 
he travels about, he would find, could he trace 
them a year later, or the year after that, tilling 
the fields, mining coal and iron, serving as in- 
dustrial workers, standing behind the counters 
in shops, collecting fares on the tram-lines, act- 
ing as engineers, brakemen or porters in the 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

service of the railways. The man whom he sees 
in uniform to-day will sit beside him to-morrow 
on the benches of the medical school, and will 
have no thought save of his future career as 
a physician. When he goes to a restaurant for 
his luncheon, he will be waited on by a man who 
marched with the rest a few years back, but who 
is, and always intends to remain, a waiter. 

The truth is that the standing army of Ger- 
many is no more and no less than a school. The 
officers, commissioned and non-commissioned, 
correspond to the teachers. They are relatively 
permanent. But the pupils go to the school to 
get through with it and to get out again. It is 
not a profession to go to school. 

The Citizen-Army 

Able-bodied young men in all walks in life are 
supposed to pass through the school in question. 
Most of them serve in the infantry, and their 
school-course covers two years. Those who 
serve in the cavalry or in the horse-artillery must 
have three years' training. During this time the 
state takes possession of them and pays all their 

86 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

expenses. The training is thorough and the 
discipline rigid. Through them a vast number 
of young men learn for the first time what it is 
to put forth real effort and to obey. 

The whole military duty of the young citizen 
is not fulfilled when his years of training are 
over. At some time during the five years follow- 
ing he must undergo three further periods of 
training covering, respectively, ten weeks, six 
weeks, and four weeks. The dates of these are 
left somewhat indefinite, and may be determined 
for example, by a change in army equipment and 
the necessity of becoming acquainted with a new 
weapon. 

It is evident that the German government 
makes rather heavy demands upon the time of 
her able-bodied male population. The time is 
not wholly lost, even apart from the question 
of the necessity of making sacrifices for the de- 
fense of the nation. It is claimed, both by those 
interested in matters educational and by many 
employers of labor, that what is gained in dis- 
cipline, orderly habits, cleanliness and prompt 
obedience, goes far to make up for what is lost 

87 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

in time. Some go as far as to maintain that the 
astonishing development which German industries 
have to show, as a result of the last decades, is 
in part due to the discipline to which the work- 
men have been subjected. How far those who 
speak thus are unconsciously influenced by pa- 
triotic feeling, and how far their position is un- 
biased, and rests merely upon an extended 
experience with the classes in question, I have 
no means of knowing. That the severe and 
impartial discipline to which young men are 
subjected at a formative period of their lives has 
no little influence upon their character and habits, 
and that the influence is, on the whole, good, I 
think I can testify from personal observation. 

Of the training and conditions of life of the 
"one-year volunteers" I shall speak under the 
next heading. I think the facts I have given are 
sufficient to indicate that the German standing- 
army is a "citizen-army." 

It shares this characteristic with the armies 

of other European nations who have fallen back 

upon the principle of short term compulsory. 

military service. The conditions are so different 

88 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

in America and in England that it has seemed 
worth while to enter into the matter somewhat 
in detail. The German army does not consist 
of professional soldiers. All classes of the popu- 
lation, from the highest to the lowest, pass 
through this school. The nobleman and the 
peasant, the judge on the bench and the door- 
keeper of his court, the physician and the man 
who drives his carriage, the university professor 
and the man-servant, the wealthy manufacturer 
and the man who takes his wage, all have 
"served." And, for a certain period of their 
lives, all have been treated alike, for the army 
handles recruits of all classes with ungloved 
hands. 

The standing army is, as I have said, the 
school; those who have graduated, the alumni, 
must take their place in the army in time of war. 
Whether in peace or in war, the force is fairly 
comparable to a militia, training for which is 
compulsory, and which makes rather heavy de- 
mands on those who are enlisted in it. It is 
worthy of remark that, small as it is, the British 
army represents about twice as many profes- 

8 9 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

sional soldiers as are to be found in the German 
army. 

The Citizen-Officer 

The "one-year volunteers," as they are called, 
are young men of education who present them- 
selves for military training, and who themselves 
pay the expense of their board, lodging and 
equipment during the year, for which they are 
obliged to serve. 

The rule is that the young man privileged to 
take his military training under such conditions 
must have passed through the first six years of 
the nine-year course of a German secondary, 
school. In other words he must have an educa- 
tion about equal to that of the graduate of an 
American high-school. It is claimed that re- 
cruits thus educated can learn as much in one 
year as the average recruit in two, and that they 
enjoy a high average of intelligence. Their ex- 
penses during their year of service are reckoned 
at from four hundred to five hundred and fifty 
dollars. 

At the end of half a year these "one-year" 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

men are divided into two classes. Those who 
appear especially well fitted for military service, 
and who have given a very good account of 
themselves during their first months of training, 
receive for the second half of the year special 
courses of instruction. At the close of the year 
there comes an examination which determines 
whether they may enter upon the path which 
leads to the dignity of enrollment in the "Re- 
serve-Officer" class. 

Whether the young man shall or shall not 
become a "candidate" is left to his own choice. 
Should he choose the honor, he must undergo 
the further periods of training demanded of all 
who have served. After that, he can, if elected, 
become a "Reserve-Officer." The election is 
made by the "Reserve-Officer Corps" of the 
regiment which he will enter. Before he is 
elected, his qualifications, including his character, 
his manner of life, and any peculiarities which 
may affect his standing as an officer, are thor- 
oughly looked into. 

The "Reserve-Officer" is, thus, a citizen-officer, 
not a soldier by profession. The men who have 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

elected him to the position have had the training 
which he has had, and are, like himself, civilians. 
That he must bind himself to more periods of 
training of from six to eight weeks, does not take 
him out of the civilian class. He and his colleagues 
are lawyers, architects, business men, teachers and 
the like. But they have learned how to take com- 
mand, in time of emergency, of bodies of troops. 
I have heard? from military sources, that during 
the present war (191 5) these militia-officers have 
proved themselves so efficient that the officer- 
corps of the German army is in the future more 
likely to extend itself in this direction than in 
that of the professional officers. This is, of course, 
mere hearsay, but it comes from good sources. 

The Soldier by Profession 

We have seen that, in 1910, there were, in the 
German army 85,234 non-commissioned officers 
and 25,519 commissioned officers. 

These classes, and these classes alone, com- 
prise the body of those who may properly be 
called soldiers by profession. Taken together 
they number about 110,000 men, no very large 

92 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

number in a population so enormous as is that of 
the German Confederation. These men are paid 
for their services in the army, others are not. 

I say that the others are not paid, but perhaps 
I should modify my statement a little. Those 
who are undergoing their military training re- 
ceive a pittance which can only be regarded as 
pocket-money. Thus, the infantry soldier is 
granted about two dollars and fifteen cents a 
month. This can scarcely be considered as a 
wage earned during the two years of his service. 
No man would work for such a wage. 

The non-commissioned officers are supposed to 
serve for twelve years. After that civil positions 
are found for them. They are picked men, disci- 
plined and reliable, and their services are valued 
as members of the police-force, guardians of 
museums, etc. 

The commissioned officers receive a special 
training, as do army officers in the United States. 
They may grow old in the service. We often hear 
of them as a privileged class, and they undoubt- 
edly enjoy a good deal of social consideration. 
But privileged to draw a large salary, or even 

93 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

what the American would regard a proper salary, 
they are not. A commanding general in the Ger- 
man army receives about three- fourths of the 
salary of a professor in Columbia University; a 
colonel receives about half as much as the 
American scholar in question. Living is not 
cheap in Germany at present, and one has to 
make sacrifices for the privilege of being an 
officer. Why do men make them? 

I suppose they are moved by considerations 
analogous to those which lead some Americans 
of ability and energy to take to science or art 
rather than to business. With some it is a family 
tradition; some like the life; some think of the 
social consideration. 

Certain it is that, if indeed the Germans have 
saddled themselves with a burden of any kind, 
those among them who have embraced the pro- 
fession of arms carry their full share of it. The 
so-called "privileged caste" enjoys no civil 
rights not enjoyed by Germans generally, and 
its members are not unfamiliar with privation. 
In personal intercourse with them I have not 
found them overbearing, but, on the contrary, 

94 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

uniformly courteous. I cannot but think that 
those of my countrymen who have a different 
report to make have, through their ignorance 
of the German language or unfamiliarity with 
German social usages, brought upon themselves 
what might easily have been avoided. 

The German People and the Army 

Doubtless there are Germans who would 
rather not have to spend two or three years in 
the school furnished by the army. No American 
keenly enjoys paying taxes. But sensible Amer- 
icans regard it as necessary that taxes should 
be paid, and good Americans pay them with 
a good grace. However, military service in Ger- 
many is by no means as unpopular as is the pay- 
ment of taxes in America. From a wide ex- 
perience, and with men of many classes, I am 
forced to conclude that the service is not un- 
popular with young men generally. All classes 
are obliged to serve, so that no one feels that 
he is discriminated against. Nor are the years 
of service, apparently, generally disliked. Stupid 
men, lazy men, and men to whom discipline of 

95 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

any kind is distasteful, of course suffer hard- 
ship. The American tramp would find his years 
in the barracks unendurable. 

Young Germans generally seem proud of hav- 
ing served. I have remarked in many instances 
that those who have been released from the duty, 
on the ground of physical incapacity, have been 
ashamed of their immunity. The army is not 
unpopular with the masses of the population. 
It should be noted that the size of the army is 
determined by vote of the "Reichstag," and the 
"Reichstag" is the creature of universal suffrage. 
The German nation has the army it wants to 
have. It may or may not be misguided, it may 
or may not allow itself to be persuaded, but the 
German military system is the expression of its 
will and represents its judgment of what is called 
for by the situation of the nation. 

Is Militarism German? 

We hear so much of German militarism that 
we need to remind ourselves that militarism is 
by no means peculiarly German. Neither in the 
size of its army, nor in the presence of a warlike 

9 6 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

spirit, does the nation enjoy any bad preeminence 
above other European nations. Indeed, it would 
be more just to maintain that the opposite is the 
case. 

The German army does not compare in size 
with that of Russia, and, for forty-four years 
after the foundation of the Empire, it showed 
itself to be a very peaceful force. During this 
period the Russian army has constantly been used 
as a weapon of aggression, Russia's last great war 
—that with her present ally Japan— being 
brought about by the seizure of Chinese territory 
to which she had no other claim than the desire 
to possess it. Russia's invasion of the territories 
surrounding her can only be compared to the 
inundations caused by a rising tide. She is al- 
ways aggressive, and needs a strong bulwark to 
hold her back. 

Nor is France without an army. She has, in 
fact, an army approximately equal to that of 
Germany, and yet her population is less than 
two-thirds as great, and her geographical posi- 
tion is a more fortunate one, for she can be ef- 
fectively attacked by land on only one side. And 

97 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

if we use the term "militarism" to indicate, not 
the existence of a great army, but the presence 
of a warlike spirit, we must surely recognize 
that public opinion in France has been for dec- 
ades vastly more militaristic than in Germany. 
The latter nation has had no desire to attack 
France, whereas the present-day Frenchman has 
been brought up to cherish the thought of a 
revenge to be attained with the cooperation of 
Russia. 

Finally, what shall we say of British militar- 
ism? Here let us use a new word. A man may 
defend himself with a knife, with a revolver, 
or with some other weapon. And he may justly 
be regarded as aggressive if he attacks his 
neighbors, whether near or remote, with any 
weapon he regards as most convenient and most 
effective. The English are a practical people, 
and they have provided themselves most abun- 
dantly with the weapons which they find that they 
can use most effectively. In other words, Eng- 
land has cultivated "navalism" as no other na- 
tion has cultivated it, and that for generations 
past. We are all so accustomed to this phenome- 

9 8 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 
non that it excites little comment even among 
those who declaim against militarism. That a little 
island off the coast of Europe should be able to 
hold in subjection vast populations in Asia, and. 
entering into an alliance with an Asiatic power 
wh.ch has also, in quite recent years, embarked 
upon a career of navalism. should dictate to 
other nations the terms upon which men may 
be allowed to live and to trade in the Pacific 
appears to be taken rather as a matter of course.' 
I think no man in his senses would maintain 
that navalism differs from militarism in being 
only a weapon of defense. The British Empire 
was not built up by a fleet that confined itself 
to patrolling the coast of England, nor did the 
Japanese take Korea by staying at home and 
defending their own ports. It is worthy of re- 
mark that no nation is as militaristic as Great 
Britain is "navalistic." There is none that de- 
hberately holds before itself the ideal of an 
army larger by ten per cent, than the armies of 
any two other powers. 

I speak of the militarism of the nations above- 
mentioned, not at all in a spirit of criticism. 

99 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

for here I wish to express no opinion at all, 
whether favorable or the reverse, on the subject 
of armaments. I only wish to emphasize the 
fact that militarism, or its equivalent, is by no 
means the peculiar possession of Germany. To 
what, then, is the curious circumstance due, that 
we should hear so much about German militar- 
ism, rather than about that of some other na- 
tion? And why should we Americans, of all 
men, trouble ourselves about it? The peculiar 
form of militarism which I have called "naval- 
ism" is far more menacing to us, isolated as we 
are, than is the land-militarism which obtains 
in so many of the European countries. 

Why it is called German 

I can discover only three reasons why militar- 
ism should so often be spoken of as if it were 
"made in Germany." 

The first is that United Germany is a young 
nation, and has, as a result of its union, developed 
a remarkable strength. The country has been 
prospering as our own great land has been pros- 

ioo 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

pering. No one in Europe has as yet grown 
accustomed to the thought of German domina- 
tion in any sphere. For a hundred years men 
have been familiarized with British "spheres of 
influence," "protectorates" and "annexations." 
If Germany held Gibraltar, it would not only be 
an insult to Spain, but an intolerable tyranny 
set up at the gates of the Mediterranean. If 
Germany held Malta, Italy would feel deeply 
wronged. If Germany first occupied, and then 
annexed, Egypt, taking possession of the Suez 
Canal, it would be regarded as more than a 
wrong to Turkey; it would be a selfish occupa- 
tion of the public highway between Europe and 
Asia. What men are accustomed to they rarely 
feel to be much of a burden, and the rise of the 
German nation is something to which Europe 
has not had time to grow accustomed. I may 
say that the great increase in the wealth, power 
and influence of our United States within the 
last generation has aroused much the same feel- 
ing in Europe as the rise of Germany. As, how- 
ever, it seems rather hopeless to do anything 
to a land as big as ours and situated as ours is, 

IOI 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

men adjust themselves to the situation with the 
best grace at their command. 

The second reason for calling militarism Ger- 
man is the admirable organization and great 
efficiency of the German army. The size of the 
force has little to do with it. As has been pointed 
out, the Russian army is vastly larger, but it 
is, like most things in Russia, sadly inefficient, 
so we hear little of Russian militarism, and it 
occurs to no one to start a propaganda to re- 
lieve Russians of its "yoke." But if German 
efficiency makes militarism German, it ought 
to make all sorts of other things German, too, 
for the same efficiency shows itself everywhere. 
It is apparent in agriculture, in forestry, in the 
chemical industries, in the organization of the 
system of education, in social legislation, in the 
administration of municipalities: Are all these 
things peculiarly German? 

The third and last reason that there is so 
much talk of German militarism is that Germany 
has, within the last decades, built up a fleet. It 
is not a fleet of overwhelming proportions, but 
it is, like the army, efficient. Such as it is, it has 

102 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

caused no little anxiety to Germany's neighbor 
across the North Sea. For generations this 
neighbor has felt secure in the possession of the 
control of the waterways of the world. A 
cloud bigger than a man's hand has appeared 
on the horizon, and it has made a sensation. 
From travel in various European countries, from 
conversations with Europeans of many national- 
ities, and from a perusal of the European news- 
papers, I should be inclined to attribute to this 
third and last reason no small share in the at- 
tention which has been drawn to German mili- 
tarism. 

Summary 

We see, thus, that the German army is, in 

reality, a citizen-army, the number of those who 

are soldiers by profession being relatively small. 

The "nation in arms" is not a nation in arms, 

but is a nation trained to bear arms in case of 

need. Undoubtedly the demanding of so long a 

period of service from its able-bodied citizens 

is a burden to the nation; and I should think 

no sensible German would attempt to defend 

103 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

it save on the score of necessity. It is not, 
however, a burden which appears to have inter- 
fered seriously with the economic welfare of 
Germany. 

The soldiers we see in Germany are not sol- 
diers by profession. Soon they will go back to 
their homes and take up the peaceful occupations 
which are to fill their lives. Germany's real oc- 
cupation is not war. Her attention is given to 
agriculture, manufactures, commerce, education, 
science, literature, music, painting, and to the 
working out of a social organization that guaran- 
tees to the masses of her population the enjoy- 
ment of those goods reserved, in some countries 
accounted civilized, rather for the few. 

In this her real work Germany has been emi- 
nently successful. It is a work carried on by 
her citizen-soldiers. It is not easy to draw the 
line in Germany between those who are connected 
with the army and those who are not. In a 
certain sense of the words, almost all able-bodied 
men belong to the army, if they are not too 
young or too old. This does not prevent them 
from being civilians, and doing, with the in- 

104 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

dustry and thoroughness characteristic of the 
Germans, the work of civilians. 

Still, most of them have, I think, a certain 
pride in their connection with the army. There 
are differences of opinion in Germany, as there 
are with us; but the mass of the Germans regard 
their army as a necessity, and it is not unpopular. 
Nevertheless, the German repudiates with very 
good reason the imputation that militarism is 
peculiarly German, or that his countrymen are 
by nature aggressive and predatory. The Ger- 
man makes a good soldier on occasion, but he is 
equally good as a clerk or as a professor. He 
strikes the foreigner as filling his leisure time 
with the mildest of pleasures — listening to music, 
taking walks in the country, feeding the birds 
in the public gardens. These are not the occu- 
pations of the professional warrior. 



CHAPTER V 
THE PROFIT AND LOSS OF MILITARISM 

IT is decidedly a loss to spend time and money 
in acquiring that of which one has no need. 
That which they pressingly need men of all na- 
tions and all classes make earnest efforts to se- 
cure. The American on his first visit to Europe 
is impressed with the facility shown by the 
waiter in hotel and restaurant in speaking a 
variety of tongues which he himself either cannot 
speak at all, or which he has, by infinite effort 
and with the aid of masters, learned to speak 
hesitatingly. It is not that the European waiter 
is a cultivated man. It is that the conditions 
of his life make it necessary for him to be able 
to converse in their own tongue with men of 
many nations, and he travels from land to land, 
working his way and learning what is a part 

1 06 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

of his trade. To us the speaking of several 
languages is an elegant accomplishment, not a 
necessity of life, not even a great convenience. 
Those who are in a position to allow themselves 
such accomplishments may devote themselves 
to them. Our world speaks English, and the 
minority, to whom it is not the mother-tongue, 
must adjust themselves to our convenience. 

So it is in every field of human endeavor. The 
amount of effort it is worth while to put forth 
must be measured by the gains which are to be 
expected, or by the evils which are to be warded 
off. An excess of effort is an unwarranted ex- 
penditure; a deficiency may result in a loss out 
of proportion to the immediate gain which has 
been made. To be sure, any man may make a 
miscalculation, and may suffer loss in spite of 
his best endeavors. And with the justice of his 
calculations we may or may not be in sympathy. 

Militarism in Germany and in America 

We Americans have heard a great deal of the 

burden of German militarism. We have been 

taught that it is a crushing weight to Germany, 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

and we have heard from various sources that 
it is a menace to European civilization. 

Of what the word really stands for I think 
most of us have no very intelligent notion, for 
we are imperfectly acquainted, as is unavoidable, 
with the conditions that prevail in Europe. We 
live under conditions so different that it is dif- 
ficult for us to realize the significance even of 
facts that are truly brought before us, and facts 
are not always truly brought before us. Why 
should there be militarism of any sort in Ger- 
many? At any rate, why, if it exists at all, 
should it not be intermittent, as with us? In 
America we have brief attacks of militarism, as 
at the time of the Spanish-American War, or 
when there is talk of a possible war with Mexico 
or with Japan; but militarism, as a permanent 
condition of things, does not exist. And if 
it is not to be met with in the Great Republic, 
why should it exist in Germany? The American 
who is not acquainted with Germany and with 
the position in which she finds herself can find 
no answer to this question. An answer is, how- 
ever, not far to seek. 

1 08 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

The Military Spirit in Germany 

In discussing the military spirit in Germany I 
cannot do better than to borrow a little from 
papers which I printed some months ago. A fur- 
ther experience has only confirmed my impres- 
sions. 

The Germans are a peace-loving people. We 
Americans know that there is no element in our 
own population more orderly, industrious and 
law-abiding, than the German element. The Ger- 
man in Germany has the same characteristics. 
The land is an orderly land, and the population 
is enlightened, disciplined and educated to re- 
spect the law. No one who lives among the 
Germans and learns to know them can feel that 
he has to do with an aggressive and predatory 
people. And those who spent in Germany, as 
I did, the month of August, 19 14, mingling freely 
in the crowds on the streets during the two weeks 
of the mobilization, when the public excitement 
was the greatest, can only wonder that a people 
so peaceable and self-restrained should be capable 

of the daring courage which has since stormed 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

fortresses, and has gathered laurels on land and 
sea in a way which compels the admiration of all 
who have not been kept in ignorance of the facts. 
Yet this orderly and peace-loving people, a 
people which has not only loved peace, but which 
for more than forty years kept the peace, while 
other nations carried on wars, a people that has, 
in the pursuit of the arts of peace, grown ex- 
ceedingly rich and prosperous — this people has 
all the while trained the mass of its male popu- 
lation to be prepared for war in case of emer- 
gency, and has built up a formidable fleet. 
Finally, it has gone to war against what seemed, 
at first, to be overwhelming odds, and the rising- 
has been not that of a class, but of a nation. 
Neither the emperor, nor the government, nor 
the officers in the army and the navy were 
responsible for the public sentiment which made 
this movement in Germany a national uprising. 
Even the Social-Democrats and those of a kin- 
dred way of thinking, men who have never been 
accused of servility to the emperor or the 
government, nor suspected of a weakness for 
army and navy, stood by their country to a man, 

no 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

and fought bravely and died without a complaint 
at the front. In the past months I have not met 
with a German of any class from the highest to 
the lowest, who has not been heart and soul for 
the war. I have heard no laments from those 
who have sent their sons; I have heard no crit- 
icism of their country from those who have been 
bereaved, and I know many such. 

A strange phenomenon to be observed among a 
peaceable and industrious race, a race as devoted 
to the cultivation of the sciences and arts as it 
is to industrial pursuits; a civilized race, not one 
living in a state of barbarism and to which war 
is welcome, a diversion rather than a calamity. 
To the American who cannot put himself in the 
place of the German, it is an inexplicable phenom- 
enon. What possessed the Germans to prepare 
for war on a great scale? What drove them to 
fight even against a world in arms, and to stake 
their all in the gigantic contest? 

The Real Situation of the German 

Let me help the American to put himself in the 
place of the German. We Americans inhabit a 

hi 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

land more than four-fifths the size of all Europe 
including Russia. It is fifteen times the size of 
the German Empire, and has only about one 
hundred millions of inhabitants, so that we are 
in the position of a family occupied in growing 
up to fill a large and well-furnished house. It 
does not cross our mind that our neighbors, 
either near or remote, can seriously frighten us. 
Who could invade us with any hope of success? 
Who could threaten our national existence, or 
subject us to anything approaching a state of 
bondage ? 

To the north of us is Canada — an empty house, 
a country with only seven million inhabitants, 
which could not hurt us even if it wished to do 
so. To the south is Mexico, which can make 
trouble within her own borders and can cause 
some Americans to regret their investments there, 
but which is no more formidable to the United 
States than an unruly class in a school. To the 
west and to the east we have the broad sea. 
Japan might quarrel with us, and might be a detri- 
ment to some of our foreign trade. But Japan is 

far from us, and we know very well that she is 

112 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

too poor, and will be long too poor, to carry on a 
long-continued war. At the most, Japan can only 
annoy us. That European states should, singly 
or combined, crush us, is a contingency too re- 
mote to fall within our horizon. As much of an 
army and as much of a fleet as we think neces- 
sary to our purposes we freely call into being, 
nor does it occur to us to ask the permission of 
any other power before increasing either. Why 
should Mr. Carnegie fill his house with bread, as 
a provision against a possible famine in the State 
of New York? Why should Mr. Rockefeller store 
gold and silver coins in a stocking and hide them 
in his mattress? The occupant of a Nebraska 
farm who should build a seaworthy boat, in 
order to be ready for all emergencies, we should 
regard as out of his mind. We Americans do 
what seems to us prudent and practical under 
the conditions which prevail in America, and we 
have no more need for the German army than has 
a Philadelphia Quaker, at his Yearly Meeting, 
for a revolver. What we think we really need, 
however, we set about with much energy to ob- 
tain. 

ii3 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

But suppose that our territory were not too 
large to be invaded. Suppose that, to the north 
of us, we had a great land with a vast population 
of more than one hundred millions, under an 
autocratic government, boasting, even in time of 
peace, an immense army. Suppose that this land 
had for many decades shown a restless activity 
in extending its borders at the expense of its 
neighbors, where it had found them too weak to 
resist aggression. Suppose that its population 
was upon a plane of civilization far less ad- 
vanced than our own; so little advanced, indeed, 
that the overwhelming majority were compelled 
to live in what civilized men must regard as a 
condition of distressing misery, ignorant, dumb, 
passive, a tool in the hands of a bureaucratic 
class which would not be the first to suffer from 
the added miseries entailed by a -state of war. 
Suppose that we had information that this neigh- 
bor of ours had for some time been massing its 
troops upon its borders in a way that could only 
be interpreted as a menace. 

Again, let us suppose that we had to the south 

of us, not Mexico, but a rich, resourceful, and 

114 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

highly civilized nation of forty million inhabi- 
tants, with a large army, formidable, well-drilled, 
and well-equipped with all that is necessary to 
carry on successfully modern warfare. Suppose 
that this nation had for forty years made no 
secret of the fact that it was animated by a 
bitter sentiment of resentment against us and 
hoped some day to have its revenge. Suppose 
that it stood in relations with the power above 
described and also with a third power to be 
mentioned below, such that we had reason to 
fear that they might act in concert to our detri- 
ment. 

Now let us extend our suppositions to cover 
the case of this third power. Suppose that 
we did not have the broad sea upon our borders 
to east and west, with the trade routes of the 
world open to us, but that there existed a third 
power so fortunately situated as to be inac- 
cessible by land and yet in direct control of our 
only available outlets to the sea. Suppose that 
our foreign commerce was far more important 
to our prosperity than it is — that our prosperity 
was in large measure based upon our export 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

trade. Suppose that the third power in ques- 
tion was rich enough to maintain a navy equal 
to our own combined with that of any other 
great power with which we might contract an 
alliance, and openly avowed its intention to 
retain control of the sea by maintaining this 
proportion. Suppose that its control of the sea 
even made it possible for this power to cut inter- 
national cables, and only let through to the world 
so much regarding what we did or what others 
did to us as seemed to it in accordance with its 
policy. Suppose that this power had an "under- 
standing" with the two described above, and we 
had reason to fear that it might join them should 
they attack us. 

The German Defense of Militarism 

How would we Americans accept such a situa- 
tion? I know my Americans. I have lived 
through the Spanish War, and have seen a univer- 
sity emptied of professors and students eager to 
fight under the flag of their country. Yet the 
Spanish War was to America, a very small and 

116 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

unimportant affair. Spain could no more crush 
the United States and reduce our country to vir- 
tual subjection than it could stay the moon in its 
revolutions. Were our land really in danger, or 
did we believe our land to be in danger, what 
would happen in the United States? Would we 
be peaceable and patient, anxious to make con- 
cessions, willing to give up territory, eager to 
limit, under compulsion, our army and navy? 
Would we humbly declare our readiness to step 
out of the race for industrial success, or to ask 
permission of another power for access to the 
trade routes of the world? I know my Ameri- 
cans, and such questions strike me as broadly 
humorous. 

Germans, in defending their militarism — they 
dislike the word, by the way, for they claim to be 
a peaceful people forced to take an attitude of 
self-defense — Germans, in defending their mili- 
tarism, argue just as we Americans would argue, 
were we in the same position. Those of us who 
come much in contact w T ith educated and intelli- 
gent Germans have heard them reason about as 

follows : 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

"Why in the world should we, above other 
peoples, be asked to deprive ourselves of a means 
of defense that seems to us essential to our wel- 
fare, and even to our national existence? We 
have shown abundantly that we wish to be al- 
lowed to carry on our industries in peace. But 
our great neighbor to the north is not so 
civilized that it regards a state of war with ab- 
horrence. In fact it is always at war with some- 
one, and it is a constant menace to us. Our 
neighbor to the west is civilized, but is embit- 
tered, and has for a generation made no secret 
of a hostile intent. The private person who lives 
between two hostile families may appeal to the 
police to keep them in order. But where is the 
police to whom Germany may appeal to compel 
Russia to be civilized and France to be peaceable ? 
There exists as yet no such police. 

"Moreover, we beg you to remember that the 
real reason of the outcry which has been raised 
over our militarism is not that we have main- 
tained an army, but rather that we have built a 
fleet. A nation not menaced as we are, and 
which, hence, has only wanted enough of an 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

army to hold in subjection nations which it has 
conquered in various parts of the earth, has filled 
the world with clamor because we have built a 
fleet about half as big as its own. It does not 
want other nations to sail to and fro upon the 
sea as it does, for it regards the sea as its own 
peculiar property. What we Germans cannot 
understand is by what reasoning it can be 
proved that English trade needs to be pro- 
tected by an English fleet, but that German 
trade should not be protected by a German 
fleet at all. 

"And, lastly, we beg you to bear in mind that 
it is not the man to whom a state of peace is 
peculiarly profitable that seeks pretexts for 
breaking the peace. During the past forty years 
Germany has been exceedingly prosperous. The 
Germans seem especially adapted for the attain- 
ment of success by dint of industry and intelli- 
gence and along the path of peaceful competition. 
Would it ever occur to us to undertake the thank- 
less task of invading Russia? As to France, we 
want the French to be our allies against the un- 
civilized East. And why should Germany attack 

119 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

England? German trade has, under existing 
conditions, been overtaking that of England by 
leaps and bounds, and Germans would like noth- 
ing better than a continuance of such peaceful 
conditions. Peace has not seemed equally profit- 
able to other nations, and that is the real cause of 
the present terrible war. War is a scourge to 
us as to other nations, but there is something 
that would be still worse. That something is 
the delivery of Germany into the hands of those 
who would crush her with a view to their 
own profit." 

In other words, the Germans, in defending 
their militarism, point out that they kept their 
very efficient army, for nearly half a century, as 
a weapon of defense exclusively, showing no dis- 
position to trespass upon the territories of their 
neighbors. They maintain that the Germany of 
to-day is a commercial nation, has interests in 
many quarters of the globe, and should, there- 
fore, have a fleet, if any nation should have a 
fleet. That a nation of seventy millions, with 
important commercial interests to guard, should 
be forced to creep in and out of the English 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

Channel under the condition of having the per- 
mission of a smaller nation, they find intolerable. 
They say that we Americans, who are eminently 
a practical people, have thought it worth while to 
build a fleet which is very formidable, and yet 
no one imagines that, even were we wholly cut 
off from the rest of the world, we could be 
starved into submission. It has not been so clear 
to all that Germany could maintain herself were 
she denied all access to the sea. 

If any German has .^heretofore had doubts 
whether, for her access to the sea, it might be 
acquiesced in that Germany be left dependent 
upon the good-will of some other nation, those 
doubts have recently been laid finally to rest. 
In February, 19 15, the importance to Germany 
of a free communication with foreign lands was 
brought home to me in a very peculiar way, and 
one which impressed me even more than the 
precautions the imperial government was com- 
pelled to take to insure my having a supply of 
bread. As a member of the governing board of 
the American Red Cross Hospital in Munich, I 

received a letter informing me that our National 

121 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

Red Cross in Washington was unable to send us 
hospital supplies without obtaining the permis- 
sion of the British Embassy in Washington. The 
Germans, of course, feel, in the face of such a 
situation, about as we should, did we have a 
desperate struggle upon our hands and multi- 
tudes of wounded to care for, and were we de- 
pendent, in order to obtain medicines and band- 
ages, upon the consent of the Japanese Ambassa- 
dor in London. 

Under the existing circumstances, Germany 
has, for maintaining a strong army, imperative 
reasons. They are reasons which would fall 
away of themselves, were Germany situated as 
we are, but Germany is not situated as we are. 
And the Germans appear to have reasons at 
least as imperative for maintaining such a fleet 
as will secure their free access to the sea. Both 
army and fleet seem to be essential, if Germany 
is to remain a free and independent nation. 
Whether it is or is not desirable that she should 
remain a free and independent nation is a ques- 
tion to be answered according to one's point of 
view. We Americans, were we the nation in 

122 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

question, would not regard the matter as a sub- 
ject for debate at all. 

The Costs of Union 

We Americans, between 1861 and 1865, paid 
very heavily for the privilege of remaining one 
nation. Business was paralyzed ; men were taken 
from their wonted peaceful occupations; blood 
and treasure were poured out without stint. 
There are few Americans now who do not think 
that the gain was worth the sacrifice. 

The Germans know that, during the long peace 
which endured from 1871 to 1914, they paid 
rather heavily for the privilege of maintaining 
their union. The mass of the able-bodied males 
among them have been compelled to interrupt 
their peaceful vocations for from one to three 
years. A certain number of men have been 
compelled to devote their whole lives to the art 
of war. And the direct expense of maintaining 
the Empire has been greater than was at first 
contemplated. The army and the navy, al- 
though maintained at an expense to the citizen 
considerably less than that paid in certain neigh- 

123 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

boring states, have cost great sums, nevertheless, 
and these sums have come from the pockets of 
the tax-payers. There have been those who 
have asked themselves seriously whether such 
sums might not with prudence be considerably 
reduced. Some have advocated drastic reforms, 
and a general reduction in expenditures. 

The Costs of Disunion 

Why should not the German states content 
themselves with a looser union, if, indeed, they 
wish to remain united at all? Why should they 
bear the burden of empire and go to an enormous 
expense to defend the confederation by land and 
by sea? 

To this question the history of Germany fur- 
nishes a more than sufficient answer. We Ameri- 
cans, happy people, have no such painful and 
humiliating past to look back upon. 

The ancient Empire, although it was not 
formally dissolved until 1806, was, for centuries 
preceding, little more than a venerable shadow. 
It had extended its palsied hand over some three 
hundred territorial sovereignties, which it could 

124 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

neither control nor protect. German principality 
warred against German principality, and it was 
the occupation of foreign rulers to foment dis- 
cords among the German states and to profit by 
them. Germany, more than any land, has suffered 
from predatory expeditions. Any excuse was suf- 
ficient to give rise to disorders— the ambition of 
a prince, the desire for booty, the expressed in- 
tention to promote the interests of a given form 
of religious faith. The Thirty Years' War, 
waged largely by undisciplined bands for the 
sake of plunder, found Germany inhabited by 
twenty million inhabitants, and, with unheard of 
cruelty, brought down the population to about 
one-fourth of that number. It was the reign of 
anarchy; starving men were reduced to cannibal- 
ism; civilization was destroyed. The petty 
princes were not slow to profit by the helpless- 
ness of their subjects and their rule became more 
arbitrary. 

Such pictures are too distressing to dwell upon, 
but they are burned into the memory of the Ger- 
man. And long after this melancholy period 
Germany remained disunited, helpless, and a 

I2 5 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

prey to humiliations. The new constitution of 
Germany, as determined, after the fall of Na- 
poleon, by the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, did 
not have to deal with several hundred petty 
sovereignties, for little more than a tenth of 
them had survived. It concerned itself with the 
rights of a reasonable number of states. But 
neither at that time, nor for many years after- 
wards, did the German attain to a real union and 
independence. For the mass of the Germans 
these were won for the first time in 1871, with 
the founding of the present Empire. 

The disadvantages of disunion had been en- 
dured for centuries. In some ages they were 
wholly unendurable, and resulted in indescrib- 
able misery, as we have seen. At other periods 
they showed themselves merely in political hu- 
miliation, in the subordination of the interests 
of Germany to those of non-German powers, and 
in great economic disadvantage. Until recently 
Germany has been accounted a poor country, and 
has been a poor country. But its poverty has 
been largely due to political causes, not to those 
properly economic. 

126 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

What would become of the vast internal trade 
of our forty-eight states, were the United States 
to dissolve into three hundred practically inde- 
pendent territorial sovereignties, a prey to mu- 
tual jealousies, and carrying on their affairs 
with little reference to each other? What would 
become of it, if, like the Germany of 1815, we 
consisted of thirty-nine states so loosely welded 
together as to form no nation, but rather, a weak 
coalition with more than one center of gravity 
and incapable of united action for the common 
interest? What would be our outlook had we 
powerful neighbors, and bonds of union, politi- 
cal and economic, so loose that rather shrewd 
observers should feel justified in expecting 
groups of our states to break away from us and 
to join with aliens in war upon the other states? 
This was the situation in Germany as late as 
1870. In spite of German history and its un- 
mistakable lessons, Germans were expected to 
array themselves against Germans, and to fur- 
ther the plans of other peoples. 

But in 1871 the mass of the Germans formed 
themselves into a nation, subordinating the war- 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

ring interests of the dynasties to the common 
good of the German people. Once divided and 
weak, regarded by other nations with a good- 
natured contempt, the Germans have become 
united and powerful. The strong command re- 
spect, and the respect is sometimes mingled with 
fear. This is to be expected; the Germans have 
come to their birthright much later than other 
nations, and men ask themselves with some anx- 
iety what they intend to do with it. 

The Profit of Union 

The union of the German states was only be- 
gun in 1871. The adoption of the constitution 
was the guarantee of real union, not the fulfil- 
ment. 

Thus, legal reform was necessary. Nearly half 
a hundred systems of law, relics, from the past, 
obtained in as many districts in Germany, and 
the limits of the districts were not even identical 
with those of the German states. The division 
of what had been a political unit had left a given 
town or village with a system of legal usages 
out of harmony with the legal usages of the 

128 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

unit of which it found itself later a part. There 
was endless confusion, and there was no system 
of rights common to Germans as such. The 
new Federal Government defined the rights of 
Germans in every corner of the Empire, and laid 
down the rules of civil and criminal procedure 
in all of the states. 

It reformed the currency, a reform which was 
imperatively demanded. In 1871 Germany still 
had seven systems of currency. The banking 
laws were reformed. The railways and internal 
waterways of the nation were rendered service- 
able to the common good. Hamburg and Bre- 
men, the two great German ports which enjoyed 
a practical monopoly of the foreign commerce 
of Germany, were brought into the customs' 
union, to their great profit as well as to the profit 
of the country as a whole. In short, all the an- 
cient barriers between the German states were 
broken down, with just the results that might 
have been expected. Germany became a great 
nation industrially and commercially. She is 
no longer a poor nation, but has prospered ex- 
ceedingly. She is no longer content with her 

129 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

rule of the kingdom of the air, i.e., with pre- 
eminence in philosophy, poetry and music, al- 
though it must be confessed that her material 
successes have not detracted from her activities 
in the realm of the arts and sciences. Still, she 
claims her place also on the land and on the sea. 
She wishes to enjoy the material rewards of her 
skill and industry. She has labored with success 
in the fields proper to the arts of peace, and she 
asks for her just share in the profits which the 
world is earning by its work. 

The Balance 

The re-birth of Germany is a recent event. 
The German nation is young and very vigorous. 
The great prosperity which it has come to enjoy 
is too much a matter of common notoriety to 
need description. I have myself watched the 
rising tide of prosperity for thirty years, the in- 
crease in general well-being, the growing pride 
of the German in the fact that he is a citizen of 
no mean city. As against the total gain to Ger- 
many, we must lay in the balance the expenses 

130 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

of the Empire, including the expenditure for the 
army and navy. Has German "militarism" 
proved itself a crushing burden? Surely not to 
the German ; he has never been so well off. 

But might he not retain all the benefits of his 
present union while disbanding his army and dis- 
mantling his fleet? The intelligent German 
laughs at the question. "We have tried some- 
thing like what you suggest," he answers, "and 
the result is recorded in history. Would you ad- 
vise us to entrust our safety to the altruism of 
the Russians? The Finns, the Poles, and the 
inhabitants of the Baltic Provinces have had their 
experiences with that. Would you suggest our 
leaving the question of our protection to the 
French? The French have taken a share in our 
history before. Or would you think it more 
prudent for us to put ourselves under the pro- 
tection of Great Britain?" 

To the German, the question whether it would 
not be well for him to give up his present means 
of self-defense sounds as foolish as would to the 
Englishman the question whether it would not 
be a good thing for England to have no fleet at 

131 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

all. Were we in the position of the German 
and had we his history behind us, we should re- 
gard the expenses of the Empire as a very small 
price to pay for an immeasurable gain. 



CHAPTER VI 
IMPERIALISM 

THE word "Imperialism" is a sufficiently 
ambiguous one, but its suggestions are to 
the American, on the whole, sinister. It suggests 
the brilliant, but ruthless and brutal career of an 
Alexander. It recalls the subjection of the civil- 
ized and half -civilized world to the tyranny of 
Rome. "Roman imperialism," we read, "had 
divided the world into master and slave," and 
the sentiment strikes us as peculiarly apt and 
expressive. 

The militarism of Germany and the fact that 
the Germans have been building a fleet have filled 
the minds of certain timid and of many ill-in- 
formed persons with ominous forebodings. They 
think of the German, whom they have hereto- 
fore pictured to themselves as composing songs 
and setting them to music, dreaming dreams 

133 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

with the philosophers, spending moon-struck 
hours in the endeavor to read a meaning into 
the second part of Goethe's Faust, smoking 
long pipes and watering the flowers in innu- 
merable little window-gardens — they think of 
this idealistic, and by no means formidable, figure 
as having put on a new and menacing aspect. 
Once they believed him to be as harmless as a 
hen, and like the hen, a fit subject to be plucked 
and to be devoured. Now they regard him as 
a Hun, bent upon the conquest of the world 
and a danger to mankind. After having been 
caricatured in the one direction, the German 
must lend himself to being caricatured in the 
other. 

We have seen, however, just what the mili- 
tarism of Germany amounts to. It is a measure 
of defense which has been forced upon the 
nation, and it has put an end to a long chapter 
of humiliations. The building of the fleet has 
been the natural consequence of the industrial 
development of the nation, and the growth of its 
commerce. For a nation of seventy millions, 
highly civilized, conscious of its strength, depend- 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

ent for a large part of its prosperity upon its 
foreign trade, to acquiesce tamely in the com- 
plete control of the sea-routes of the world by 
a nation of forty-five millions, however rich 
and however accustomed to the privilege, would 
argue sheer imbecility. We Americans would 
not tolerate such a situation for a moment. 

It is not the mere possession of either army 
or fleet that gives Germany a share in the im- 
perialism which characterizes so many nations, 
including our own. In the sense in which I am 
now using the word, a sense of it everywhere 
current at the present day, it is not being an 
empire that makes a country imperialistic. A 
republic — let us say, France — can be imperialistic 
just as well. Imperialism consists in the con- 
trol exercised by a nation over peoples which 
cannot properly be regarded as belonging to it 
and truly sharing in its national life. Let us 
glance briefly at the imperialism of several great 
nations, and see whether Germany is more im- 
perialistic than others. 



135 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

Germany 

We have seen that the German Confederation 
is a voluntary union of states which naturally 
seem to belong together. Their populations have, 
to an overwhelming degree, the same blood, the 
same language, and the same traditions and 
ideals of life. They are animated by a strong 
will to be one and they well know what they 
suffered when they were disunited. They 
are educated along the same lines and to the 
same degree. They form a close political unit, 
characterized by the enjoyment of universal 
manhood suffrage and a share in their own 
government. Their populations now aggregate 
nearly 70,000,000. 

This nation controlled, in 19 14, colonial pos- 
sessions in Africa and in the Pacific, with a pop- 
ulation of about 12,000,000. 

The nation came very late, and came unwill- 
ingly, into the possession of a dominion across 
the seas. Bismarck, the empire-builder, was loath 
to embark upon the enterprise, and it may be 
said that the exigencies of trade forced the Ger- 

136 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

man gradually and hesitatingly to become the 
owner of foreign lands. 

The United States 

The forty-eight states of our Union constitute 
a true nation. We have assimilated the 
foreigners who have come to us, or are rapidly 
assimilating them, and we may with justice call 
ourselves a nation of nearly 100,000,000 souls 
with a will to be one, enjoying the same political 
rights. 

We control, in our dependencies, populations 
aggregating about 10,250,000. Most of these 
came under our control as a result of the war 
with Spain, and I suppose most Americans an- 
ticipated as little as I did, that the wards of the 
nation would be thus increased in number. 

The British Empire 

The British nation is, as nations go at the 
present time, a comparatively small one. The 
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 
has a population of about 45,000,000, less than 

l 37i 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

half that of the United States, and about two- 
thirds that of the German Confederation. This 
population inhabits two small islands which 
cover, in extent of surface, about one-hundredth 
part of the land comprised within the limits of 
the British Empire. The population of the 
United Kingdom may, on the whole, be said to 
be animated by the will to be one, but this must 
be said with a reservation. About three- fourths 
of the population of the smaller island, Ireland, 
remain, after many centuries of British rule, in- 
imical to England, and can scarcely be said to 
be willingly British. 

The population of the United Kingdom con- 
stitutes the core of the British Empire, and its 
parliament governs the whole, in theory, at least. 
The Empire covers nearly one-fourth of the land 
surface of the globe, and its population numbers 
421,000,000 persons, or nine times the popula- 
tion of the United Kingdom. 

The colonial part of the Empire, with a popu- 
lation of 376,000,000, consists of about fifty 
commonwealths, some very small and some of 
enormous extent. A few of them are practically 

138 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

self-governing; the majority are much more de- 
pendent than is commonly thought. All of them, 
without distinction, are colonies, that is to say, 
none shares in the government of the Empire, 
none has the rights of independent nations. 
What rights they have are, in theory, conferred 
upon them by the United Kingdom, and may be 
curtailed or withdrawn. They cannot declare 
war or make peace, nor can they have an inde- 
pendent representative in international affairs. 

Of the 376,000,000 who compose this colonial 
empire about 18,500,000, are grouped into com- 
munities which may be said to be either willingly 
British, or in part willingly British. These com- 
munities are the Dominion of Canada, New- 
foundland and Labrador, Australia and New 
Zealand, and the Union of South Africa. Only 
in a very limited sense can the Union of South 
Africa be said to be willingly British. Some 
4,600,000 of its 6,000,000 inhabitants are 
colored, and very few of them enjoy any politi- 
cal rights. Of the whites only two-fifths are of 
British origin. Much of the land was taken by 
conquest only fifteen years ago, as the result of 

139 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

a bloody war, and there still appears to be a dis- 
position to insurrection when there is any hope 
of throwing off the British yoke. Thus, about 
13,000,000 of the 376,000,000 belonging to the 
British colonial empire are willingly British. 
They give up certain sovereign rights, either as 
a result of sentiment or with a view to certain 
political or economic advantages. They live, 
however, in countries very far removed from 
the British Islands, and their conditions of life 
are widely different. It cannot be maintained 
that their interests are identical with those of 
the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. They 
are no true part of the British nation; they con- 
stitute, in reality, distinct nations, and have been 
developing a national consciousness. 

The rest of the colonial empire, comprising in 
round numbers 360,000,000 souls, -is ruled by the 
strong arm. By this I do not mean that the only 
weapon used is an armed force. Peoples may 
be ruled by an external power in a variety of 
ways. Race may be set off against race, re- 
ligion against religion. Semi-civilized or bar- 
barous rulers may be kept in submission by the 

140 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

payment of subsidies. Native states may be 
granted an apparent autonomy, and yet held in 
a state of subservience. But when all is said? 
we come back to the fact that hundreds of mil- 
lions of human beings, scattered over the whole 
surface of the earth, are ruled by a mere hand- 
ful dwelling upon two small islands off the coast 
of Europe, and that this vast dominion has been 
built up in the interests of a trade profitable 
primarily to that handful. England is some- 
times pointed to as an illustration of the triumph 
of democracy. But the British Empire is as 
little democratic as any political power can be 
conceived to be. Only one British subject out 
of nine enjoys a share in its government. 

I have no desire to maintain that the British 
Empire, such as it is, is badly governed. At- 
tempts to secure independence are, as they always 
have been, put down with the strong hand. But 
those who remain contentedly British enjoy the 
benefits of British administrative capacity. I 
have wished only to call attention to certain pal- 
pable facts. The overwhelming mass of British 
subjects in no sense belong to the British nation. 

1 4 l 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

The Empire is a geographical expression. It is 
held together by an external force. The bond 
which prevents its dissolution is the colossal 
British fleet. Truly, in considering the facts, one 
is reminded of the power of ancient Rome. Here 
we have imperialism carried to its farthest prac- 
ticable limit, and forcing itself upon our atten- 
tion in every corner of the habitable globe. The 
courage of the undertaking commands our ad- 
miration. 

France 

The French are a nation possessing a highly 
favored land, fertile and very productive, with 
ready access to the northern and southern seas, 
and by no means overpopulated or likely to be 
overpopulated, for the population is stationary. 

Yet France thinks it worth while to hold 

colonial dominions second only in extent and 

importance to those of the British Empire. It 

has dependencies in Asia, Africa, America and 

Oceania, with a total population of some 44,- 

000,000 souls, a number larger than that of the 

population of France. A considerable part of 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

these colonial possessions has been acquired since 
the foundation of the present Republic. 

The original policy of France towards its sub- 
ject populations was that of education and 
assimilation. She tried to make them French. 
But for more than a quarter of a century past, 
the hopelessness of compassing this end, and the 
realization that the colonies are to be regarded 
as valuable chiefly from a commercial point of 
view, have brought about a change of policy. 
Nevertheless, France is, in certain respects, more 
democratic in its treatment of its colonies than is 
Great Britain. Certain colonies have the right 
to elect representatives to the French legislature, 
and these representatives enjoy equal rights with 
those elected by constituencies in France. 

Russia 

The Russian Empire consists of an enormous 
stretch of land in Eastern Europe and Northern 
Asia, covering about one-sixth of the land sur- 
face of the globe. It is without oceanic posses- 
sions. 

As I have said elsewhere, the spread of the 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

Muscovite dominion can be compared only to the 
inundations caused by a rising tide. Civilized 
peoples and barbarous tribes have alike been sub- 
merged. The process is repeated wherever there 
is a dam too weak to hold back the flood ; it met 
with a decided check at the hands of Japan in 
1 904- 1 905, but such checks are temporary and 
their influence is local. The land- frontier of the 
Russian Empire in Europe and Asia extends over 
more than 12,000 miles, and there are many 
races and peoples who feel themselves menaced. 
We think of the Russian Empire as inhabited 
by Slavs. The mass of the population is Slavic, 
but we must not forget that there are various 
Slavic peoples, some of them by no means closely 
related with, and by no means sympathetic to, 
others. We should also remember that the non- 
Slavic population of the Empire rivals in extent 
the population of France or that of the United 
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The 
Russian Empire represents a dominion, not a 
nation. It is not held together by an inner 
cohesive force, by the will to be one, by the free 
consent of the governed. The great mass of its 

144 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

subjects are too little intelligent and too little in- 
formed to give a free and intelligent consent to 
anything. To compare the union of its peoples 
to that of the forty-eight states that form our 
Union would be grossly misleading. In short, 
Russia is imperialistic, and aggressively imperial- 
istic, in the peculiar sense of the word with which 
I am concerned, and not merely in the sense that 
its ruler bears the title of emperor. 

Varieties of Imperialism 

Enough has been said to show that countries 
differing widely from one another in their form 
of government and in the level of civilization 
upon which they stand may be imperialistic, if 
we use that word to indicate the control exercised 
by a nation over peoples which form no part 
of it — peoples who do not govern but are gov- 
erned. 

Naturally, those who are thus governed will 
be governed well or ill according to the measure 
in which those who exercise control over them 
are humane and enlightened or the reverse. It 
may be accepted as a maxim that subject peoples 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

are not held in subjection by other peoples for 
the good of the former, and as an experiment 
in altruism. Economic advantage, pride of do- 
minion, the occupation of a vantage point with 
some ulterior aim, these are the springs of action 
that lead to colonial expansion. After a colony 
has been taken, it will, of course, be said in 
countries which are supposed to live upon a high 
moral plane, that it is better for the colonists 
to be governed in spite of themselves than to be 
left to their own devices or to the mercy of other 
dominant powers. But the whole history of 
colonization, now a long one, shows that this 
is an after-thought and an excuse. 

Nevertheless, modern civilized nations will try 
to govern their dependencies in a civilized way. 
I have suggested that, to those who will submit 
to it, modern British colonial rule is not a bad 
one. The French have shown much the same 
spirit, and have even attempted to go farther. 
Neither Great Britain nor France has taken 
possession of a civilized race and deliberately 
degraded its civilization: 

In Russia we meet with a different spectacle. 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

In Finland, in the Baltic Provinces, in Poland, 
civilization has met with a distinct reverse. But 
this is because Russia is not yet a civilized power, 
as those words are understood in Western 
Europe. She has brought, or has tried to bring, 
her provinces down to her own level. To be 
brought to this level may be a rise for a Tartar 
horde; it is a fall for a European people. 

American Imperialism and German 

If one will take a map indicating in colors 
the territorial growth of the United States, one 
will see something that suggests to the superficial 
observer the spread of the Muscovite dominion. 
The territory we occupied, or, rather, controlled, 
in 1783, constitutes less than a third of that now 
covered by our forty-eight states. On different 
parts of the great expanse taken over later we 
read the dates: 1803, 1810-1813, 1818, 1819, 
1845; 1845-1848, 1846, 1848, 1853. Not all of 
this land came to us as the result of purchase or 
of peaceable negotiations. 

Nevertheless, the land our states now cover 
is in no wise to be compared to the Russian 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

Empire. In the main, our spread was that of 
a vigorous people into empty or relatively empty 
lands, and it was followed by rapid assimila- 
tion. We carried with us a civilization higher 
than that of the peoples whom we absorbed, and 
we granted to the new territories, as soon as 
they were ready to exercise it, the whole measure 
of freedom enjoyed by any of ourselves. From 
Maine to California, from North Dakota to 
Texas, the land is inhabited by Americans, who 
represent a singularly uniform type, who wish 
to be Americans, and who exercise the privilege 
of self-government. If the great tract of coun- 
try over which we are spread must be compared 
to any empire, let it be compared to the German 
Empire, which is also a free union of civilized 
states, with a homogeneous population. Let it 
not be compared to the Russian Empire or 
to the British, which are something wholly dif- 
ferent. 

With the purchase of Alaska in 1867 tne 
United States can scarcely be said to have entered 
upon a colonial policy. The land had, at that 
time, an estimated population of only 30,000, of 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

whom two-thirds were Eskimo and other In- 
dians. Within twenty years, however, the 
United States has come into the possession of 
what may be called a small colonial empire in 
the seas both to the east and to the west. Its 
foreign interests have very considerably in- 
creased, and I do not believe that any American 
is, at the present day, in a position to say what 
people or peoples the exigencies of the future, 
as yet unknown, may bring wholly or partly 
under our control. One thing is certain. The 
American nation has not consciously started out 
upon a campaign of imperialism. We are not 
land-poor, for we inhabit an enormous stretch 
of country with boundless resources. In order 
to prosper, we are not compelled to take forcible 
possession of the lands of others. And I think 
another thing is certain. That is, that, to the 
average cultivated American, the thought is re- 
pugnant that we should seize the lands of other 
peoples with no other view than that of exploit- 
ing those peoples in our own material interests. 
There are, to be sure, Americans who do not 
stand upon so high a plane, but they are in the 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

minority. We gave Cuba back to the Cubans. 
It would offend the moral sense of such Ameri- 
cans, as are not moved by their own direct finan- 
cial interest, to think that we should hold the 
Philippines, with no thought of the well-being of 
the native populations, and with an eye single to 
the development, in the interests of Americans, 
of the great natural resources of the islands. 

I have thought it worth while to bring under 
the same heading American imperialism and 
German, for the two have not a few points in 
common. In the first place, both nations repre- 
sent confederations of civilized states which nat- 
urally belong together; and in each case the 
colonial empire is not merely of limited extent 
but is of comparatively recent origin. Com- 
pared with the size of the nations controlling 
them, the populations controlled have been, up 
to the present, small. 

In the second place, as American interests 
have become more largely international, it has 
seemed worth while to the United States to hold 
certain dependencies remote from our own 
shores. The same sentiment has come to obtain 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

in Germany, and it is the natural result of the 
great increase in the volume of Germany's for- 
eign trade. 

In the third place, the United States, in order 
to live and prosper, has not been compelled to 
seize the lands of foreign peoples. Neither has 
Germany. With colonies as yet comparatively 
insignificant, German thrift and intelligence 
have rendered the German states exceedingly 
rich and prosperous. Assured of peace, and 
under even moderately fair conditions of free 
competition in the markets of the world, the 
German has shown that he can hold his own as 
can the American. As things are, and with a 
land far smaller than our own, the German has 
found himself so well off at home that emigra- 
tion from Germany has practically ceased. 

And I think I can in all justice reiterate, in 
speaking of Germany, the two "certainties" men- 
tioned above. I feel ready to affirm without 
hesitation that the German nation has not, in 
recent years, consciously started out upon a cam- 
paign of imperialism, as that word is commonly 
understood. Certain foolish Germans have 

I5i 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

published intemperate books, and these books 
have been more read and commented upon in 
foreign lands than in the country in which they 
have been brought to the birth. This is entirely 
natural. Germany is a new nation and a strong 
nation. She inspires those, who before regarded 
her with a more or less kindly contempt, with 
the apprehension always inspired by strength. 
But in my many conversations with Germans of 
all classes, both military and civil, I have never 
heard the books in question discussed, unless I 
led up to the topic myself, which I was moved to 
do from a perusal of the English and American 
newspapers. 

Such utterances are not taken more seriously 
in Germany than are the utterances of extremists 
among ourselves. I am not referring to what 
has been printed since the outbreak of the war, 
but to what was written before, and might be 
expected to represent the sentiments of Germans 
under normal conditions. The mass of the Ger- 
mans longed for peace, and for the economic 
development made possible by the reign of peace. 
They had no thought of a career of conquest, 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

although they were ready for an energetic de- 
fense. 

The second certainty referred to is that it 
would be repugnant to a people, so humane and 
civilized as the Germans have shown themselves 
to be, to treat subject races with inhumanity and 
to exploit them remorselessly. Think of the 
social legislation of the German states; of the 
protection of the rights of the poor, the infirm, 
the helpless. It would be as unnatural for such 
a people to deal inhumanly with a subject race as 
it would be for us. 

Summary 

Nations differing widely from one another in 
the form of government which they enjoy may 
be imperialistic. The most imperialistic of na- 
tions, Great Britain, does not happen to be a 
republic; but the republic of France has a colonial 
empire which is usually classed as second in ex- 
tent and in importance. All of the great powers 
are imperialistic to some degree. But the United 
States and Germany have become so very re- 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

cently, and have been far less imperialistic, so 
far, than the other powers I have mentioned. 
Neither the United States nor Germany deliber- 
ately set out upon a career of conquest at any 
time within the past generation. We did not 
make war upon Spain in order to take away her 
colonies; their acquisition was for us an accident 
of the war. Both the United States and Ger- 
many have, however, concluded that it is worth 
while to hold possessions across the seas. 

Doubtless there are many Germans who agree 
with Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians, Span- 
iards, Hollanders, Portuguese and others in think- 
ing that it is a good thing to have a colonial 
empire of some importance. But this no more 
proves that they have harbored thoughts of 
conquest, than does the American's conviction 
that it is a good thing to be rich prove that he 
harbors the purpose to get rich by force or by 
fraud. 

Upon the desirability or the reverse of im- 
perialism in general I express no opinion. But 
I think it worth while to emphasize the fact that 
Germany has not been in the past, and is not 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

now, more imperialistic than other nations. In- 
deed, to catch up with some of them, she would 
have to make immense strides in the future. 
They out-distance her almost hopelessly. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE FUTURE OF THE NATIONS 

TWO new nations, the United States of 
America and United Germany, have, 
by their own robust inner development and 
through the strength given them by the measure 
of modern civilization which they enjoy, com- 
pletely upset the balance of power among the 
nations of the earth within half a century. In 
each case the foundations for this development 
were laid long before, but it was reserved for 
recent years to reveal how imposing a super- 
structure would rest upon them. China, a far 
greater nation, if greatness is to be measured by 
size of population, has not so far upset the bal- 
ance of power at all. 

Is it or is it not inevitable, is it or is it not de- 
sirable, that the balance of power should from 
time to time be upset and set up again upon a 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

new basis? What is it reasonable to look for? 
For what is it wise to work ? In this final chapter 
I shall discuss briefly the status quo and the 
balance of power, and shall present a few con- 
siderations which seem inevitably to suggest 
themselves to one who reflects upon the signifi- 
cance of these expressions. 

The Status Quo and the Balance of Power 

The expressions themselves have constantly 
been used as catch-words, as magical formulas 
to tickle the ears of the unthinking. That rather 
vague expression the status quo is often in the 
mouth of the man who finds it to his purpose 
to urge the continued existence of a state of 
things which long has been or which has recently 
come into being. He who has been well off, or 
who is well off, is no friend to innovations. The 
existing balance of power always seems satis- 
factory to the man on whose side the balance 
inclines. 

. Nevertheless, in spite of their abuse as catch- 
words, something may be said for the status quo 
and the balance of power, as I shall indicate later. 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

But it is only their abuse that can delude us into 
thinking that they are things to insist upon in- 
dependently of the interests of civilization and 
a regard for the welfare of mankind, or that 
they should be maintained, when the conditions 
which, perhaps, justified them, have undergone 
great changes. 

Arguments based upon the status quo and the 
balance of power are primarily appeals to the 
conservative. The American has his conserv- 
ative side; he is not inclined to revolutions; but 
a conservative of the conservatives he has never 
been, and he is too young and too vigorous to 
abhor changes on principle. What, on the whole, 
has been the attitude of the American towards 
the status quo? 

Did we accept the status quo when we dispos- 
sessed the Indians? Did we bow down before 
the principle when we published our Declara- 
tion of Independence in 1776? Did we show our 
respect for it when we rebelled against the search 
of American ships and the impressment of Amer- 
ican seamen by Great Britain in the years pre- 
ceding 181 2? 

158 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

Did we think of the status quo in 1861, when 
we refused to recognize the Confederacy, and 
insisted upon the integrity of the Union? Did 
we treat it with deference at the time of our war 
with Spain ? Neither the status quo nor the bal- 
ance of power influenced the President who first 
enunciated the Monroe Doctrine; neither was in 
the mind of Lincoln when his inspired pen freed 
enslaved millions; neither controlled the series 
of decisions which have given us a fortified 
Panama Canal under American control; neither 
held us back from that participation in interna- 
tional complications which is unavoidably attend- 
ant upon the extension of our interests in the Far 
East. 

The rise of Germany has been as natural and 
as inevitable as that of our own country. The 
union of the German states in 1871 resulted in 
the United States of Germany, a strong con- 
federation of highly civilized states under a fed- 
eral government analogous to our own. The pop- 
ulation of the Empire, large at the time of its 
foundation, has rapidly increased. It is a homo- 
geneous, thoroughly educated, highly enlightened 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

population, with the mental and moral qualities 
which make for economic progress; order and 
discipline, industry, ingenuity, enterprise, and a 
capacity for organization. The German nation 
is, as a nation, very young — much younger than 
our own. The blood of youth courses in its 
veins, and Germany naturally looks forward 
and not back. The unbroken peace which the 
nation enjoyed for nearly half a century resulted 
in an internal development which has brought 
it, in science, industries and commerce, into the 
front ranks among modern nations. 

Such a development — it is a development 
wholly in the interests of civilization — has un- 
avoidably disturbed the balance of power in 
Europe. It is not the German army and the 
German navy that have disturbed the balance 
of power. These are only symptoms. The na- 
tion itself has, by its natural development, and 
largely through the exercise of moral qualities 
which, in the abstract, all men approve, been 
the real cause of the disturbance. Old things 
in Europe have to some degree passed away; 
things of no little importance to Europe have 

1 60 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

become new. Shall we appeal to the status quo 
and conspire together to set back the clock, or 
shall we recognize that the times have changed 
and that we have changed with them? 

It may be urged in favor of the status quo in 
general that it is a principle which makes for 
peace. Conservatism is valued by the thought- 
ful, and more valued by men of experience than 
by the young and headlong. The Law is con- 
servative; the Church is conservative; the social 
usages to which men are accustomed, they do 
not lightly give up in favor of others. In all 
countries it is felt that a certain respect for what 
is sanctioned by custom gives stability to the 
social organism. Yet there is no country in 
which there is not some change. Where there 
is none, or almost none, there is no life and no 
progress. The only pure conservative is the man 
who is dead. He who is wisely conservative 
will strive to assimilate as much of the new as 
seems good, and to avoid paying too high a price 
for the innovation. 

The status quo makes for peace, but, if con- 
ditions change beyond a certain point, the peace 

161 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

may reveal itself as a frozen immobility which 
nations with life in them will reject as intoler- 
able. The changes which have taken place in 
the United States have rendered wholly unavoid- 
able altered relations to the world at large. The 
development of Germany makes it out of the ques- 
tion that Germany should now be regarded and 
treated as it was not unnatural to regard and 
treat the loose aggregate of territories that passed 
by that name in an earlier time. 

It seems as though it ought to be possible to 
arrive at some sort of a mutual understanding 
among the more civilized nations, at least, that 
may take account of such changes. It is desir- 
able that developing nations, civilized nations 
whose growth in wealth and power signifies a 
contribution to the total wealth of the world and 
to the richness of its civilization- — it is desirable 
that such nations should have a place made for 
them, a place which they may take gradually, as 
able men rise gradually by their own efforts in 
a civilized state. That every period of growth 
and development should be succeeded by a disas- 
trous convulsion, and by an enormous destruc- 

162 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

tion of values in many lands, is a great misfor- 
tune. Is this unavoidable? 



The Freedom of the Seas 

The problem is one for which there is no easy 
solution. There can scarcely be a readjustment 
of any kind in human affairs which does not 
bring some hardship to someone. Free compe- 
tition under peaceful conditions does not seem 
ideal to those who have enjoyed special priv- 
ileges, or to those who are endowed with a 
large measure of indolence or incapacity. 

I shall here do no more than make a sugges- 
tion towards a partial solution of the problem 
in the form in which it at present confronts us. 
I shall dwell upon the important topic of the free- 
dom of the seas. 

Let me begin with an illustration. The State 
of New York is a rich and an old state. Let us 
suppose that it laid claim to the control of vari- 
ous portions of territory scattered all over the 
United States, aggregating in all nearly one- 
fourth of the total surface of the country. Such 

16$ 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

possessions would be of no value to New York, 
and, for that matter, could not be kept under its 
control, were a ready means of communication 
with them not under its control as well. Such 
a means of communication is furnished by the 
railroads of the United States. 

Let us suppose that the Empire State, to render 
itself secure in the possession of its "colonial em- 
pire," assumed a practical control over the rail- 
ways of the whole country; building and sending 
out a vast number of armored trains; erecting 
forts at strategic points — important junctions — 
sometimes near and sometimes on the territories 
of other states supposed to be independent; keep- 
ing bodies of armed men ready to strike at a 
moment's notice where any dependent territory 
might seem disposed to aim at independence or 
where any other state might be. suspected of an 
inclination to assert rights not in harmony with 
the interests of New Yorkers. Suppose that 
other states also claimed to have interests beyond 
their own borders, and, although in a lesser de- 
gree, equipped and sent out armored trains, under 
the tacit understanding, to be sure, that they 

164 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

should do nothing to endanger the dominant in- 
fluence of New York. 

Such a condition of affairs might be main- 
tained for a while by the actual superiority in 
strength enjoyed by the State of New York, by 
its skill in diplomacy, and by the inability of 
other states to find some practicable means of 
putting an end to it in their own interests. For 
a while it might be kept up by the force of sheer 
inertia. Tradition and prestige count for much 
in the affairs of men. States that feel themselves 
to be weak may not like to see the fortresses 
of foreign powers on their territory or at their 
gates, but their inhabitants grow used to the 
sight, and their feelings are not what they would 
be if they saw it for the first time. 

But suppose that, in the natural course of 
events, at least two of the other states grew as 
rich and powerful as the State of New York, if 
not more so. Could the existent state of affairs 
then permanently be maintained? Would such 
States consent to be shut up within their own 
borders or to reach out beyond them only on 
sufferance, exercising a limited right more appn> 

165 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

priate to a colony than to a sovereign state ? The 
question, I think, answers itself. And if the 
State of New York, finding the equipment of 
so many armored trains a heavy burden, should 
point out to the other states that they were 
burdened, too, and should suggest an all-around 
check in armaments, but one made under such 
limitations that the dominant control of New 
York over the railways of the country should 
remain secure, how would the suggestion be re- 
ceived? This question, also, carries with it its 
answer. 

The distances which separate the five principal 
divisions of the British Empire, the United 
Kingdom, South Africa, India, Australia and 
Canada, are enormous. They stretch entirely 
around the world and zigzag over many latitudes. 
The distance from England to the Cape is about 
5,000 miles; that from the Cape to Bombay is 
not much less; that from Bombay to Melbourne 
is still greater; from Melbourne to Auckland it 
is nearly 2,000 miles; from the last-mentioned 
place to Vancouver it is more than 6,000; 
and from Halifax to Liverpool there is a stretch 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

of 2,700. The voyage from London to Bombay 
by way of the Mediterranean is 6,000 miles long; 
that from London to Sidney, by the same route, 
more than 11,000. 

The holding of a dominant control over these 
great waterways necessitates the occupation of 
a multitude of intermediate stations, and such 
the British Empire has in its hand — naval and 
military bases, coaling stations, commercial sta- 
tions which are at the strategic points of interna- 
tional trade. Such colonial holdings have not 
been acquired through the free gift of nations 
stronger than Great Britain. As one runs one's 
eye over the list of the British colonies and 
makes a note of the method of their acquisition, 
one reads: "possession taken," settlement,' , 
"conquest," "settlement and conquest," "capitula- 
tion," "cession," "settlement and cession," 
"military occupation," "annexation," "protector- 
ate declared," "treaty, conquest and settlement," 
"occupation and cession," "treaty and protect- 
orate." 

These settlements, conquests, capitulations, 
cessions, occupations, protectorates and annexa- 

167 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

tions have been, naturally, at the expense of the 
weaker party, whether that party was small or 
large, uncivilized or civilized. Were Spain as 
powerful as the United States, she would no 
more permit the occupation of Gibraltar than we 
would that of Newport News. Were Italy a 
very powerful nation she would refuse to have 
Malta in the hands of Great Britain. Were 
Turkey not helpless, Egypt would not have been 
first occupied and then made a protectorate. 
Were China not a weak giant, she would no more 
tolerate a Hong Kong under British rule than 
would the United States a Staten Island con- 
trolled by Great Britain. 

I have no desire to find fault with the British 
for the methods by which the growth of their 
empire has been insured. They are the usual 
methods employed in the acquisition of colonies, 
and I am not concerned with the question of 
colonies in the abstract. I have chosen to con- 
sider the situation created by the existence of 
the British Empire, rather than some other, for 
two reasons. The one reason is the enormous 
size of the burden which the British have taken 

1 68 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

upon their shoulders; the other is its extreme 
unwieldiness — the wide distribution over the face 
of the earth of the colonies which compose the 
great dominion. The British nation is not one 
of the largest, by any means, and yet it seems 
forced to police the whole surface of the globe. 
And its "interests" are so distributed that it 
seems almost inevitable that they should come 
into conflict with those of many races and 
peoples. 

With the rise of other strong nations, even 
highly civilized and not especially aggressive na- 
tions, the weight of the burden must inevitably 
increase. No civilized nation to-day lives within 
its own borders. None occupies itself exclusively 
with agriculture and the consumption of its own 
products. All demand a free access to the 
markets of the world. Unless they are guar- 
anteed the freedom of the seas, a guarantee 
that they cannot regard themselves as enjoying 
so long as the seas are under the dominant 
control of any one nation, they must feel that 
the great public highways of the world may at 
any time be closed to them. This, by weaker 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

nations, will be felt to be intolerable, and, by 
strong nations, will not, in the long run, be 
tolerated. 

It is not a question of substituting a dominant 
control by one nation for that exercised before 
by another. It is a question of genuine inter- 
nationalization. The question is a burning one. 
Nations, whose advance in civilization and capac- 
ity for production is a marked one, may, if 
allowed to expand peaceably in their trade-rela- 
tions, not be forced to enter upon the part of 
territorial expansion, at the expense of their 
neighbors, characteristic of vigorous and grow- 
ing nations under more primitive conditions. An 
international guarantee of the freedom of the 
seas and of access to the markets of the world 
might conceivably ward off some of those dis- 
astrous convulsions from which it has seemed 
impossible up to the present to protect even the 
civilized world. 

Such an arrangement could only be compassed 
with the hearty cooperation of the leading civil- 
ized nations. Its effects might be very far-reach- 
ing, affecting even the status of colonial peoples 

170 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

generally. But it scarcely seems as though any 
difficulties it could conjure up could weigh in the 
balance against the overwhelming malady it 
would seek to cure. 

The Duty of the Nations 

We commonly regard men as having certain 
immediate and imperative duties, and other 
duties which may be counted as more remote. 
Self-preservation and the preservation of wife 
and children, the endeavor to raise oneself and 
one's family out of dire poverty and degrading 
dependence, the struggle to obtain some of the 
material advantages which other men enjoy as 
a reward for labor — these have the approval of 
all, and appear to bear the stamp of imperative 
duty. He who is neglectful in these fields 
is scarcely in a position to fulfil properly other 
duties which men also regard as of importance. 
There are other duties of importance; the duty 
of obeying the laws and seeing to it that others 
obey them; the duty of being a good neighbor 
and regardful of one's fellow man; the duty of 
bringing about changes, from time to time, in 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

the social organism, when that organism is dis- 
covered to be imperfect in this respect or in 
that, and to work hardship to individuals or to 
social classes. 

It is the same with nations. No one denies tQ 
the nations the right of defending their national 
existence or struggling against such a mutilation 
as would condemn them to the life of the cripple. 
No one condemns their peaceful attempts at 
self -development, their raising the level of educa- 
tion and efficiency in their populations, their 
ingenuity and assiduity in prosecuting those arts 
which contribute to the world's civilization and 
material wealth. If the success with which any 
nation fulfils these tasks gives offense to any 
other nation, it is because of a conflict of private 
interests, not because the activities in themselves 
are objectionable. The very virtues of the 
grocer on the corner of the block may offend me, 
if I am myself a grocer, and am less highly en- 
dowed with those virtues. 

But the nations have also other duties: the 
duty of treating their neighbors with all the 
consideration that existent circumstances may 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

permit of; the duty of helping to work out 
some international system of relations which will 
make it possible for the nations to live a civilized 
life in their relations with each other, and not 
merely possible for individuals within a nation 
to act like civilized men. If a nation is not re- 
gardful of the duties first mentioned, it will be 
able to do small service toward the fulfilment 
of those dwelt upon just above. Weak nations 
may be powerless for evil, but they are also 
powerless for good. 

I have maintained that the great desideratum 
for the family of the nations is some such flex- 
ible system of international organization that 
growth may take place unaccompanied by con- 
vulsions and the rupture of the system. The very 
first requisite appears to me to be an interna- 
tional guarantee of the freedom of the seas. In 
this the small nations would find their profit 
as well as the larger. This guarantee would, to 
a certain extent, throw open to all the markets 
of the world, and would be in the interests of 
the survival of those really fit. But it would 
not, in itself, solve the whole problem. I have 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

hinted that it might, in the future — perhaps, the 
remote future — lead to a new conception of the 
status of colonies in general. However, that is 
a problem for a more or less distant future, and 
to-day we are confronted by a condition which 
calls for immediate consideration. The present 
situation is intolerable, so intolerable that it will 
surely bring with it its remedy. The trade of 
the world, of neutral nations as well as bellig- 
erents, has been treated as the private property 
of a single nation; the public highways of the 
world have been blocked. Those who go down 
to the sea in ships appear to be under no law. 
The nations must combine together to prevent 
a recurrence of such intolerable conditions in the 
future. 

In this book I am concerned chiefly with Ger- 
many, and I turn again here to Germany. Like 
any individual man, the German nation has found 
itself confronted by certain imperative duties, 
and these it has fulfilled with an unusual meas- 
ure of faithfulness and diligence. It has pro- 
vided for its national defense, it has educated 
and trained its population, securing to all classes 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

a high measure of well-being. It has cultivated 
the arts and sciences, contributing to the en- 
lightenment and material well-being of the world. 
It has reaped a substantial reward for its labors. 
Finally, it has found itself plunged into a des- 
perate war in which it must protect itself against 
destruction, or, at the least, serious mutilation. 

Into the causes of the war I need not here go, 
further than to say that the causes so often 
brought forward are wholly trivial and inade- 
quate. The Germans did not go to war because 
Treitschke lectured; they did not take up arms 
because one or more military enthusiasts wrote 
intemperately ; Nietzsche had no more to do with 
it than Artemus Ward. Great world-movements 
are as little to be accounted for by such trivial 
circumstances as is the motion of the dining-car 
by the fact that there is a fly in the butter. Nor 
must w T e look for the true causes in the notes 
of diplomats, however cleverly drawn up. 
These are symptoms, or, at best, occasions, not 
the causes which exert a permanent pressure, 
and bring about a real disturbance in the balance 
of power. In truly civilized nations the words 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

or even the actions of an individual man have 
not the significance that they may have in 
an oriental despotism. 

Nor shall I predict the outcome of the war. 
That is something for the future. I say with 
some confidence, however, that, should Germany 
win, she will probably be confronted by a situa- 
tion as little anticipated by most Germans at the 
beginning of the year 19 14, as was the situation 
in which we found ourselves after the Spanish 
War anticipated by most Americans. We had 
not entered upon a war of conquest; we found 
ourselves with a colonial empire upon our hands. 
What will Germany do? Frankly, I do not 
know, and I do not believe that, as yet, most 
Germans have any definite opinion. 

I have now watched the course of the war for 
ten months, living on German soil, seeing for 
myself the conditions in Germany, and yet hav- 
ing the advantage of being able to view the 
situation with the critical eye of an outsider. 
During this period I have had free access to all 
the foreign newspapers, American, English, 
French and Italian; for not only have such been 

176 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

sent to me direct, but they have constantly been 
for sale, and uncensored, in the streets of Mu- 
nich. I have witnessed in Germany an exhibi- 
tion of strength for which I ,was wholly un- 
prepared, although I thought that I knew the 
land well. That the German nation, large as 
it is, united as it is, civilized and thoroughly or- 
ganized as it is, can be permanently relegated to 
the position of a second-class power, under the 
dictation of some other nation or group of na- 
tions, I regard as wholly inconceivable. 

Something else will have to be done with Ger- 
many. If the ancient privileges of some other 
nation stand in the way of the natural and 
wholesome growth of the German nation, such 
ancient privileges will have to be curtailed and 
some compromise arrived at. The Germans will 
certainly assert themselves, as we Americans 
have been asserting ourselves and will assert our- 
selves in the future. They will claim all the 
rights appropriate to a great and a highly civilized 
nation that is penetrated with the conviction that 
it serves the world in serving itself. 

We must not forget that the strength of Ger- 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

many is inherent. It is not the after-glow of a 
famous past that is impressing us. Germany is 
not strong by accident of position. She is not 
rendered temporarily formidable through a mem- 
bership in a coalition of powers whose civiliza- 
tions have little in common, whose permanent 
interests are divergent, and who can be expected 
to hold together only for a limited period. 

Germany's strength is from within, and such 
strength is the most indestructible. Nations that 
hope to compete with her in the long run must 
possess or develop a strength of somewhat the 
same nature. It is as inevitable that Germany 
should grow in power and in influence, should 
claim her rights, and should maintain her strict 
independence, as it is that the United States 
of America should do the same. The very 
strength of both of these nations seems to lay 
them under especial moral obligations. In 
that strength there is a force which will not 
be exhausted in a single struggle of any sort, 
whatever its outcome. It will make itself felt in 
the world long after the passions aroused by the 
present struggle have subsided. 

i 7 8 



GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

United Germany has become a great and a 
powerful nation. Her voice will be listened to 
in the future as it has not been listened to in 
the past. She has given the world an exhibition 
of what a modern civilized state can do for all 
classes of its own citizens, and has shown how 
strong a state may become through the improve- 
ment of its own social texture. Education, dis- 
cipline, organization, these elements in modern 
civilization have had an opportunity to stand re- 
vealed in their true significance. The exhibi- 
tion has been an impressive one. 

Of the universal and deep-seated devotion to 
their state, which has been revealed in all classes 
of the people, no foreigner could have had a sus- 
picion before it was brought to the surface in 
this crisis. The German accepts the fact that he 
belongs to the state. With that fact he cheer- 
fully accepts the consequences. The state has 
served the people, and the people serve the state. 
The self-sacrifice of the individual seems to be 
taken as a matter of course. 

This phenomenon was not always to be ob- 
served in Germany. National feeling was once 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

at a low ebb, and Germany easily became a prey. 
To-day, under changed conditions, Germany is 
strong; so strong that the humanitarian may feel 
justified in reminding the German as he must 
remind the American, that no man has the right 
to be only a German or an American, but should 
remember that he is also a man. Whatever our 
immediate ends, we must bear in mind that we 
belong to the family of the nations. We must 
not lose sight of broader aims, international 
right and the welfare of humanity. 

Hence I venture to express the earnest hope 
that Germany, while fulfilling her imperative 
duties towards her own subjects, will not be in- 
different to those broader duties which we have 
a right to demand of civilized nations — duties 
towards the world at large. May she join with 
other nations in striving to prevent the substitu- 
tion of one tyranny for another. May she aid in 
maintaining the freedom of the seas. 

It is in the conviction that the United States 
and Germany have in the future a more im- 
portant part to play in the drama to be enacted 

by the nations than most Americans and Ger- 

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GERMANY OF TO-DAY 

mans even now realize, that this book has been 
written. Both of them are nations still in their 
prime, with their work still before them. May 
they so come to understand one another that they 
can work together in harmony for the welfare 
of the whole family of nations. May they not 
fall, through blindness, into useless and harmful 
conflict. The civilized world should be one and 
united. It is now not one and united. In bring- 
ing about the union of the future upon a reason- 
able basis, the lead will have to be taken by the 
strong. 



THE END 



181 



